Staff Hours Lost (971/20)
Request
- Please can you provide the total amount of staff hours lost to absence for staff illness in each of the last three calendar years (2017, 2018, 2019).
- Please can you also detail the three main reasons detailed for staff absence.
Response
Please be advised that the information you have requested is not all available in a readily retrievable format. We are unable to provide data for the specified time period because the Force changed recording systems in 2019. In order to answer this request in its entirety we would need to cross reference and merge the data recorded on both systems. Unfortunately, to conduct this search would exceed the ‘appropriate costs limit’ under the FOI Act.
This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide the information requested for 2017, 2018 and 2019 (January – July) as this was retrieved during our initial research. Please see attached document (971_ATTACHMENT).
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.