Our Ref: F-2012-01898

12thMarch 2013

Dear Mr Hamilton

Re: Request for an Internal Review of a decision pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”)

F-2012-01898 – Telephone ‘0845’ responses

I refer to the above and your request for an internal review of the decision in your FoI Request relating to responses to the PSNI telephone number 0845 600 8000 . I have not set out the text of your original request however you will be aware of the contents of this.

I would offer my sincere apologies for the delay in responding to your request for an internal review however FoI Reviews must be prioritised against Court, operational, litigation and other commitments which I am also required to perform, and unfortunately due to an extremely high volume of work this has taken much longer than expected.

I have carried out a review of how the initial request was processed and the response provided. When carrying out the review I have looked at the matter completely afresh and have revisited all considerations and decisions reached.

The request has been treated as applicant blind and your identity as the requester has not been a factor in arriving at the decision reached. As in every case, PSNI must be mindful that release of information under FOIA is a release into the public domain, not just to the requester, and accordingly that there must be careful consideration of any harm caused by disclosure and where the public interest lies.

The most basic and fundamental principles of FoI are contained in the general right of access to information held by public authorities pursuant to s.1(1)(a) and s.1(1)(b) of FOIA which states that a person is entitled to:-

□Be informed in writing by the public authority if it holds the information; and

□To have that information supplied.

This is of course subject to any applicable exemptions being engaged.

The original decision concerning your request was set out in the response which was sent to you by email on 24th May 2012. The response advised that if there was a problem with a call reaching the PSNI network this would be due to the service provider. You were also advised that there was no service available provided by the service provider to detail the information requested from the estimated 2.5million calls PSNI receive every year. I consider that this response was confirmation that PSNI did not hold the information requested. You subsequently requested an Internal Review.

Having considered the matter carefully, the decision of my independent internal review is to uphold the decision that PSNI do hot hold the information requested. However, in the course of conducting this review I have been liaising with PSNI Information and Communications Services department who in turn have been in contact with BT. I am pleased to advise you that despite incurring significant cost and effort in compiling this data which is not ordinarily held, as a good will gesture BT have produced data from which the following can be confirmed:-

10,410 calls (which represent 0.4% of the total calls) received the ‘all busy message’ during the period January 2012 to December 2012. This is the message played to callers while all lines are busy and the message is presented by BT as they cannot deliver the call to PSNI until a line is freed up.

For the avoidance of doubt this data was provided by BT at PSNI’s request and was not ‘held’ by PSNI for the purposes of FOIA. This information is therefore being provided outside FOIA.

If you remain unhappy about how your request has been handled you have the right to apply directly to the information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner’s address is:-

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely,

C0233048, Senior Legal Adviser