Private Support Companies

1. A breakdown showing which companies were paid, and how much in the year.
2. For each company paid, please also provide a breakdown of individual ‘jobs’, investigations or contracts paid for during the year, showing the amount paid for each job, investigation or individual contract, how many staff were provided for the job, investigation or contract, the role of each staff member, and a summary of the task they were asked to assist with. 
3. Please also provide a copy of all invoices related to each company paid during the year.
4. I would also like the same information for the financial years 08/09, 07/08 and 06/07.

Some parts of this request may be easier to answer than others, and should this prove to be the case I would ask that you release available data as soon as possible rather than hold up the entire request. Please also contact me with any concerns or problems as soon as possible.

I can confirm that we hold some of the information you have requested however from our preliminary assessment, we estimate that compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000. This is currently £450. The cost mainly centres around your question 4, a task which is estimated would take in excess of 140 hours for one person. This is not information that we use as part of our regular management information requirements. The data is not held in a single location but in various departments throughout the Force.

I can say however that we have not used any of the example companies shown in your request nor do we use any company for any investigatory or enquiry work. We do use an agency for temporary administrative or data processing type work. You might wish to bear that in mind if you wish to refine your request.