Traveller site Warrington Road

Local Authority Gypsy & Traveller site located in Warrington Road, Runcorn

a) Can you please tell me how many complaints have been made to the Police about incidents occurring at the above site and/or (b) complaints made about individuals residing or staying at that site between the period 1st December 2008 and 31st August 2009.
Can you please tell me what these incidents were and; the dates they were reported.

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

Please note: for ease I have split question 1 into two parts.

1a) There is no information held.

1b & 2) Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Cheshire Constabulary, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you with a notice which a) states that fact, b) specifies the exemption in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

To obtain this information would require the details of every individual residing at this site to be collected and those details circulated to every police force to ascertain if any complaints have been made about these individuals within this time frame. This it is estimated would exceed the appropriate limit. 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.

In any event if the information were sought it would it would be the personal data of the persons involved and it would be exempt by virtue of Section 40 of the Act as follows: The processing of this data by disclosure to a third party would be unlawful and breach the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998. This information is exempt by virtue of the following sections: Section 40(2) Any information to which a request for information relates is also exempt information if -

(a) it constitutes personal data which does not fall within subsection (1), and
(b) either the first or the second condition below is satisfied>
(3) The first condition is:-
(a) in a case where the information falls within any of paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition of "data" in section 1(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998, that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act would contravene:-
(i) any of the data protection principles, or
(ii) section 10 of that Act (right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress), and
(b) in any other case, that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act would contravene any of the data protection principles if the exemptions in section 33A (1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (which relates to manual data held by public authorities) were disregarded.
(4) The second condition is that by virtue of any provision of Part IV of the Data Protection Act 1998 the information is exempt from section 7(1)(c) of that Act (data subject's right of access to personal data).
In addition where the police obtain information for the purposes of carrying out an investigation that information is itself exempt from disclosure under Section 30 of the Act.