Lost or Misplaced Items

1. A complete list of items which have been lost or misplaced by officers in each of the following years: 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011?
2. What was the total cost of items lost of misplaced by officers in each of the following years: 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011?
3. Please list individually the five most expensive items lost or misplaced by officers during the same time period and the year the incident happened
4. A list of items stolen from officers, police stations or police cars in each of the following years: 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011?
5. What was the total cost of items stolen from officers, police stations or police cars in each of the following years: 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011?
6. Please list individually the five most expensive items stolen from officers, police stations or police cars during the same time period and the year the indecent happened

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

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 basis for this is the cost of location and retrieval of the information in relation your questions 1, 2 & 3. There are no centrally held records of lost or misplaced items. Lost property registers were until very recently manually held documents allocated to police stations and property offices throughout the Force area. To retrieve the information would take one staff member approximately about a year to examine what would amount to about 35,000 records a year. This will clearly exceed the appropriate limit.

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 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 order to assist you i can provide you with a link to previously disclosed information that will partially answer your questions 4, 5 & 6.

Previous Disclosure 2905