Forensic Toxicology Submissions

Keywords

Blood, Samples, Positive, Roadside, Tests, Cases, Prosecutions, Lack, Toxicology, Testing, Forensic, Providers, Submitted, Time, Limit, Missed, Cap, Submissions, Exist, Approved, Currently, Policy, Documentation, Science, SOP, Breakdown, Number, Type, Procurement, Specification, Documents, Procuring, Services, Product, Codes, Backlog, Queue, Fail, Laboratory.

Publication Number

PUB 1306

FOI Reference Number

16239

Request Title

Forensic Toxicology Submissions

Date Range

2019

Information Requested

Please can you provide the following information for the year 2019 (calendar year or financial year or whichever period of 12 months is used by your police force):

1. The number of blood samples taken following positive roadside tests by your police force

2. The number of blood samples submitted to forensic providers in (1)

3. The number of cases that resulted in prosecutions being dropped for lack of toxicology testing because the time limit has been missed

4. Confirm whether a "cap" on forensic toxicology submissions exists within the police force and if so, confirm the precise nature of the cap in terms of number of cases and submissions.

5. Identify when the cap came into operation and how it was approved and whether a cap is currently in place

6. Supply any policy documentation used by those submitting forensic toxicology cases to forensic science providers - for example an SOP used by the force to determine how a submission is approved

7. Identify the Forensic Science Providers used by the force for Forensic Toxicology and provide a breakdown of the number of submissions to them in 2019 by type of submission - as defined in the procurement specification used by your force (eg. Toxicology Alchol).

8. Please supply the toxicology specification documents used by your force when procuring forensic toxicology services which contain the product codes (eg 04TOX)

9. The current backlog in submissions in your forcce broken down by their prosecution time limit date ie. the number of cases where a submission in forensic toxicology is delayed (in a queue) and the date when the prosecution will fail owing to lack of laboratory analysis.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Part Disclosure with Section 12 and Section 17 Exemptions

Information Correct as at

19 October 2021

Date of Disclosure

07 December 2021

Related Documents/Links

Drug driver samples - Forensic-analysis 2019 to 2021

FOI 16239 Response

Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, the obligation of Section 1(1)(b) cannot be met as Essex Police does not hold all the information requested in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the time and cost limits of FOI.

When responding to a request for information under the terms of the FOIA, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if the authority estimates that the cost of the retrieval of the information requested would be in excess of £450 (equivalent to 18 hours work).  The costs criteria relates to a request in its entirety, which means that if we cannot retrieve all of the information requested within the costs limit, we are not obliged to retrieve any of the information requested.

Section 12(1) of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to:

“…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The following explanation outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:

In relation to Question 3, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request from our current systems.  Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information for FOI responses.  This request would entail manually extracting the requested data and then reviewing each case file one by one to ascertain whether late results were the case of discontinuance.  To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests

Consequently, and to this extent, Essex Police are exempt from the duty to provide information you have requested under the provisions of Section 12(1) of the FOIA.  Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by this part of your request.

Having said that, and in an effort to assist, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the FOIA, Essex Police can confirm the following:

Caveat:  The data is correct as at 19 October 2021.

1. The number of blood samples taken following positive roadside tests by your police force.

This specific data is not held by Essex Police.

2. The number of blood samples submitted to forensic providers in (1).

Essex Police submitted 1841 samples for Roads Traffic toxicology in the calendar year 2019.  However, we cannot state how many were due to a positive roadside test.

4. Confirm whether a "cap" on forensic toxicology submissions exists within the police force and if so, confirm the precise nature of the cap in terms of number of cases and submissions.

Yes, a cap exists.  The cap quota is shared between Kent and Essex Forces as a collaborative partnership for Forensic Services.  The cap is set by the Forensic Capabilities Network and is reviewed and in some cases adjusted every 6 weeks.  It is currently set at 49 cases/samples per week for the two Forces combined.

5. Identify when the cap came into operation and how it was approved and whether a cap is currently in place.

Caps were introduced in June 2019, was approved via a Silver and Gold structure to NPCC Level and is still in place, managed by the Forensic Capabilities Network, with the caps subject to regular review in line with National Capacity.

Following the cyber-attack on Eurofins Forensics Services in June 2019, which was widely publicised in the media, in order to ensure all forces had adequate supply to all forensics services it was necessary to implement a national prioritisation mechanism and as a result, caps were introduced.  The decision making was through the NPCC Operation Sourberry Gold Group, with membership drawn from all police forces at a Chief Officer level, the Forensic Science Regulator, Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service.  Operational management occurred through the Operation Sourberry national Silver Group.  Following the close out of Operation Sourberry it has been necessary to retain caps on Road Traffic Toxicology (Drugs) and this is managed via the NPCC Operation Talla (Forensics) Gold Group, set up to manage the national response to the impact of the Covid pandemic.

6. Supply any policy documentation used by those submitting forensic toxicology cases to forensic science providers - for example an SOP used by the force to determine how a submission is approved .

During 2019 there was no specific policy or SOP in place regarding approval of RT Toxicology.  Submissions were reviewed by authorised signatories and sent to lab if approved.