Recruitment

1. Please provide a list of all publicly advertised jobs in the last 12 months and the salary (if within a band such as £35-40k dependent on experience please state this).
2. Please state the number of frontline serving police officers / PCSOs who have joined the force in the last year. If possible, break this down by rank.
3. Please state the number of frontline serving police officers / PCSOs who have left the force in the last year.
4. Please state the number of civilians who have joined the force in the last year.
5. Please state the number of civilians who left the force in the last year 
6. Please provide a breakdown of the number of staff made redundant in the last 12 months. Break this down to include both civilian staff and frontline officers. Also state how many were compulsory and voluntary redundancies.
7. How much has been paid out in redundancy pay-offs in the last year?
8. Please state the top five biggest redundancy pay-outs and give (a) the job title of the individual, (b) the number of years service and (c) the name of the individuals
9. Are there plans to make officers / staff redundant? If so, how many and when?

My questions about recruitment relate to external hiring and not staff moving between jobs internally.

By way of clarification, a member of staff is classified as a whole time member of staff. A worker employed for 2 days per week will count as 0.4 of an employee.

When I ask for figures for the last year this means August 2010 – August20 11. However, if the figures are collated from April – April (financial year) then please provide this instead.

I am not interested in consultancy staff / agency workers employed by the force.

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

1. Please see FOI 3304 External Ads 2010-2011
2. New starters since 1/8/2010 - 1 x ACC, 39 x Constables, 1 x PCSO
3. Leavers since 1/8/2010 - 121 x Officers, 25 x PCSOs
4. Civilian joiners since 1/8/2010 - 35
5. Civilian Leavers since 1/8/2010- 255
6. Please Note: Police officers cannot be made redundant.  All civilian staff.   Last 12 months from 1st August 2010 to 31st August 2011 we have lost 104 police staff, 95 voluntary redundancy and 9 compulsory redundancy
7. Over the last year £1,634,924 has been paid out in redundancy payments
8. The 5 biggest redundancy pay outs in the last 12 months have been:

(i) £70,019
(ii) £56,540
(iii) £49,260
(iv4) £39,585
(v) £38,774

(a) See below:

(b) All 5 individuals had over 20 years service and for redundancy calculations service is capped at 20 years.

(c) See below

With regard to a & c above, job titles and names. I have considered this part of your request and I am not obliged to provide this information.

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 by virtue of Section 40 (2) Personal data.

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

(c) 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.

Disclosure of this information would breach principles 1 & 2 of the Data Protection Act 1998 and would therefore be unlawful.

9. Please Note: Police Officers cannot be made redundant.  We have tabled proposals for a reduction of up to 61 staff posts between 30th Sept and 31st Dec 2011.