Celebrity Escorts

1. How many times in the last five years (i.e. since 2006) has your police force deployed officers to act as escorts to celebrities and famous people (this should not include politicians or members of the royal family)?

2. Please provide a breakdown by year.

3. For each instance, please provide the name of the celebrity, how many officers were deployed, and the reason police officers were required.

4. For each instance please also detail whether the celebrity made any payment to the police force.

5. For each instance (if held) please provide the cost, or cost estimate, of providing this service.

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 costs relate to determining whether or not we actually hold any of the information you have requested. At the very least we would have to conduct a manual search of the daily duty planners to see if over the past five years any officer has been allocated duties in respect of the people you describe. As its unlikely that the individual would be named on such a document it would require further investigation with individual officers. This it is estimated would take one member of staff about 30 hours and would clearly exceed the appropriate limit. Your request is therefore refused.

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.

I can say that from enquiries made from staff such as our press office they have no recollection of any such event.