Chief Officer Expenses

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, could you please email me details of all expenses claimed by officers of Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable, and Assistant Chief Constable. Ideally, I would like to know about all expenses claimed within the last ten years.

The information should include the officers' name, the date it was claimed, and as full details about the nature of the expense as possible, including why it was necessary.

In accordance with section 1(1) (b) of the Act our response is provided below;

The information you are requesting is already, in part, reasonably accessible to you by other means and is therefore exempt information in accordance with Section 21 (1) of the Act.

Please visit our web site where you will find all the Chief Constables expenses from 2005 to 2009 and all the other Chief Officers for the last financial year. This is published in accordance with the model publication scheme as agreed with the Information Commissioner.

Expenses paid Chief Officers

We are unable to supply the remaining part of your request, expenses of all Chief Officers, 1998/1999 to 2008 and the Chief Constables expenses 1998/1999 to 2005. In order to retrieve the information for all Chief Officers it is estimated that it would exceed the appropriate limit. (The data for one year that is already published took over 36 hours) The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004. Furthermore, section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned regulations.

The Chief Officers for whom information is already published are:

• Chief Constable Peter Fahy, (Now moved to Greater Manchester Police)
• Chief Constable David Watton (From 01/12/2008)
• Deputy Chief Constable Graeme Gerrard. Please see our web site as above
• Assistant Chief Constable David Baines. (Now retired)
• Assistant Chief Constable Gary Shewan. (Now moved to Greater Manchester Police)
• Deputy Chief Officer (Support Staff) Brian Simmons. Please see our web site as above.

In relation to the last part of your request, 'why it was necessary' This information is not held.