Public Sector Equality Duty (115A/20)
Request
- Your Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) compliance policy and reports from FY 2010 to FY 2019 on how you’ve met this policy.
- For FY 2010 and end FY 2019, provide a list of all LGBT organisations (eg Stonewall, Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence) you have: consulted; received training from; paid monies to for goods and services.
- The money spent annually, during this same period, on supporting and promoting LGBT groups and causes including: rainbow branding (such as alterations and additions to uniforms, vehicles, flags, posters and other materials); attending conferences and events, running LGBT-specific social media accounts, training for officers; subscriptions and donations to LGBT organisations such as Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ as follows).
REASON FOR DECISION
During this period, although there has been a huge amount of diversity work done, there have also been many department reorganisations and role changes. As a result this information is not centrally collated. Additionally, every Neighbourhood Policing Unit engages with diverse individuals and community groups as part of their ‘Business as Usual’. This engagement however is not collated together and shared with the centre.
Therefore in order to provide all of this information we would need to undertake a manual search of records across the whole force area. Such a search however would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
Unfortunately, due to the reasons above, I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. However in order to assist I can advise that with regard to question 1, some relevant documents can be found under the Equality, Diversity and Human Rights section on our Policies and Procedures page:
https://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/publication-scheme/policies-and-procedures/
Additionally, with regard to question 3, I can confirm that between 01/04/2014 and 31/03/2020 (records are not kept beyond 6 years) we paid Stonewall Equality Ltd £10,280 net.
I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
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