Osman Warnings

1) The total number of 'threat to life' warnings - formerly known as Osman warning - served over the past three years on Merseyside, broken down by year and by neighbourhood policing zones (A1, A2, A3 etc).

2) A brief description of what the warnings related to - threat to kill, serious harm etc.

3) The number served on men, women and under-18s.

I understand that under the act, I should be entitled to a response within 20 working days. I would be grateful if you could confirm in writing that you have received this request upon receipt. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

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

Please note that although your request is addressed to Merseyside Police I have taken that you intended it for Cheshire Constabulary.

I can confirm that Cheshire Constabulary does hold 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 basis for this estimate is the cost of retrieving/extracting the information to be disclosed from other information. 'Osman' warnings are held on individual person records. Those records contain all relevant information relating to an individual and others associated with that individual, which is of course what police officers need when conducting investigations. There are no separately recorded lists etc. It would be necessary to manually examine approx 1 million records to locate each individual with an Osman warning and extract the information you request. This will clearly exceed the appropriate limit and your request is 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 am unable to offer you a realistic alternative to enable you to obtain meaningful statistics.