Severance Pay Paid

1. The total amount of severance pay or loss-of-office compensation paid to all staff in financial year 2009-2010.
2. The total amount of severance pay or loss-of-office compensation paid to staff earning more than £50,000 per annum in financial year 2009-2010.
3. The range of the above payments (i.e. smallest and largest).

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

I have now considered you request and I am not obliged to provide the information you are seeking.

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.

The information is exempt information in accordance with section 40 (2) Personal data.

The information relates to payments under redundancy arrangements with a very small number of individuals. To disclose the data would in my view identify those individuals. This information is therefore the personal data of the persons concerned.

Personal data means data which relate to a living individual who can be identified

(a) from those data or
b) from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller.

Section 40(2) of the FOI Act 2000 relates to 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, In this case disclosure would breach principle 1& 2 of the Data Protection Act 1998:

Principle 1:
Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, shall not be processed unless-
(a) at least one of the conditions in Schedule 2 is met, and
(b) in the case of sensitive personal data, at least one of the conditions in Schedule 3 is also met.

Principle 2:
Personal data can only be processed for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or purposes.

In this particular case no schedule 2 conditions are met and general disclosure is not a specified purpose therefore disclosure would be unlawful. Section 40 (2) is therefore an absolute exemption .