Copies of all Vetting Decisions - Sept 2022
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities:
Unless exemptions apply, the first duty (at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held.
The second duty (at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
However, where exemptions are relied upon (Section 17 of FOIA), there is a requirement to provide the applicant with an explanation either:
- a) stating the fact
- b) detailing the exemption(s) in question and
- c) why the exemption applies (if not apparent).
Information Request
- Copies of all vetting clearance decisions (including rationale) issued between 5-9 September 2022, in cases where a Disclosure and Barring Service check revealed previous spent or unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands, warnings, or inclusion on any barred lists.
FOI Duty
First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request
Second Duty – See below
Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request
Exemption - Section 12(1)
Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA
Reasoning – Essex Police are unable to provide a data report as this is not available in a readily extractable format nor is there one central log.
Each vetting case file would need to be manually reviewed in order to determine details of that vetting decision included aspects to meet this request, which would take an estimated 30 minutes per case file. Moreover, the vetting process involves rationales that are completed against each case file by more than one Vetting Officer, each Vetting Officer could at any one time be handling up to 18 Vetting Case Files simultaneously all of which host a multiple of rationales – some containing adverse information and others that do not. Such a review would take an excessive amount of time and the development of a separate report is outside the Act.
Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2)), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following
Essex Police can advise as follows:
Caveat: The following data from a previously published FOI is correct as at 19 April 2022:
1. For the years 2019/20 and 2020/21, please provide the number of individuals vetted prior to their being appointed or granted access to Police assets.
The below figures are not the exact number of individuals as that is not retrievable owing to the fact that not everyone who is offered a vetting clearance goes on to accept the role and start with Essex Police. Contractors, re-vets and vetting upgrades are included in this data as the data does not distinguish between them. Some people have multiple clearances e.g. all PC’s have RV & CTC – these are 2 separate clearances. In accordance with MOPI and GDPR some records would have been deleted already and will not be included in the statistics below:
2019 = 2,774 completed clearances
2020 = 3,963 completed clearances
2021 = 2,977 completed clearances.
2. Of those vetted, please specify the number who were (i) granted full clearance and the number who (ii) did not pass vetting.
i. As per above it is not possible to state how many ‘people’ were granted a clearance and then went on to have access to Police assets.
ii. The below figures are per person who were refused either an upgrade in their vetting status or who were refused a new vetting clearance (included are figures for officers, staff, contractors and volunteers):
2019 – failed vetting = 78
2020 – failed vetting = 77
2021 – failed vetting = 79.
3. For the years 2019/20 and 2020/21, please provide the number of individuals granted provisional or conditional clearance.
Essex Police do not grant vetting clearances with restrictions or conditions. Every contractor, volunteer, employee or partnership worker is vetted fully prior to access being granted.
In a further effort to assist, the following links are to Essex Police policy and procedures on Vetting, but also include articles from our publication scheme, which you may find of interest:
C3200 Procedure - Vetting | Essex Police
G2500 Policy - External Vetting | Essex Police
Vetting of Police Officers and Police Staff 2018 to 2020 | Essex Police
Management Vetting Form Completion 2000-2020 | Essex Police
Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.