Illicit Tobacco Supply
Keywords
NRM referral, Illegal Tobacco supply
Publication number
1176
FOI reference number
15267
Request title
Illicit Tobacco Supply
Date range
2020
Information requested
In the year 2020 how many NRM referrals did this police force make about victims involved in the illegal tobacco supply chain?
For each of these instances I would like to know:
- The date of referral
- Age of the victim
- Gender of the victim
- Any records which further detail the involvement of the victim in the illicit tobacco supply chain (e.g were they selling the tobacco).
- Their nationality
Disclosure with exemptions
S12
Information correct as at
15.2.21
Date of disclosure
14.5.21
Related documents
FOI 151267 response
Thank you for your enquiry which has been logged under the above reference.
Section 1 of 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. Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In respect of your enquiry:
In the year 2020 how many NRM referrals did this police force make about victims involved in the illegal tobacco supply chain?
For each of these instances I would like to know:
- The date of referral
- Age of the victim
- Gender of the victim
- Any records which further detail the involvement of the victim in the illicit tobacco supply chain (e.g were they selling the tobacco).
- Their nationality
In respect of Sec 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however in respect of Sec 1(1)(b) Essex Police does not hold the information in a format that allows it to be retrieved within the scope of FOI.
When responding to a request for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, 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 relate 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 Freedom of Information Act 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 has been provided demonstrating the difficulty in retrieving the information, Investigations and referrals of victims to the NRM as a result of investigations specifically into illicit tobacco supply are, we acknowledge, predominantly undertaken by Trading Standards Local Authority Teams and not the police. In order to provide the details requested, we would need to manually review all NRM referrals made by Essex Police and conduct a review of each referral to establish the level of detail requested, ie. which incidents relate to illicit tobacco supply chains. Any manual review would exceed the time and cost limits of FOI would also 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.
Essex Police are therefore exempt from the duty to provide this part of the information you have requested under the provisions of section 12(1) of the FOI Act and formally under Section 17(1) of the Act, 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.
In an effort to assist under Section 16 of the act, and outside of the above obligations, Essex Police can provide the following which may be of assistance.
The overall number of NRM referrals made by forces are published quarterly by the Home Office however this is not broken down to offence type.
Please note
“NRM referrals are made via a digital submission to the Single Competent Authority (SCA) within the Home Office. The Home Office owns the NRM process and the data from all first responders. Whilst the officer or staff member can elect to save their referral, it is not mandatory. Also, the victims may have been exploited in respect of many different commodities of types of exploitation, of which illegal tobacco supply is only one. Officers could have only mentioned e.g. illegal drug supply. Finally, as the referral is designed to support and safeguard the victim, officers may have decided the commodity they were dealing with for the criminal exploitation is not relevant to supporting the victim and so not included it.”
For these reasons, a low number of references to illegal tobacco supplies held may be as a result of the way information is recorded (since it is primarily a safeguarding referral and not a crime report) rather than an accurate reflection of the issue.
It may be beneficial if you resubmit your request to the Home Office as the data controller for NRM data to potentially offer a more comprehensive picture of the data.
Essex Police trusts that the links and information provided is of assistance.
Thank you for your interest in Essex Police.
The above request will be included within the Essex Police Publication scheme.