01/FOI/26/007833/X - Polish victims of grooming

Request:

...We are seeking statistics of polish victims of grooming and grooming gangs, whether they are minor or adults 

Time period - Since the entry of Poland to the EU - 1st of May 2004

Response:

It has been determined that to establish if any information is held with regards to your request would exceed the appropriate time limit of 18 hours. Therefore Section 12(2) of the Act applies.

To determine if any information is held it would require manual interrogation of all offences where the victim is Polish. To read each incident to establish if the offences are linked to grooming gangs would far exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours.

Section 12(2) – Exemption where cost of confirming if information is held, would in itself exceed costs.

s1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ (18 – hours).

Activities that may be counted within our time estimations are:

• Determining if the information is held;
• Retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
• Extracting the information from a document containing it.

Please take this as a refusal notice in accordance with section 17(5) of the Act which states; A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

Ordinarily under our section 16 duty to provide advice and assistance, we would advise you how to refine your request to a more manageable level. However, due to the difficulties outlined above, I cannot see how this can be achieved in this case.

Please note that police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide information and statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force’s response to your questions should not be used for the comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.