Management Vetting Form Completion 2000-2020
Keywords
Management, Vetting, Form, Completion, Internal, Interview, Arrested, Outcome, Acquitted, Prosecuted, Appointed, Granted, Clearance, Upgrades, Pass, Conditional, Provisional, Vetted.
Publication Number
PUB 1442
FOI Reference Number
16091
Request Title
Management Vetting Form Completion 2000-2020
Date Range
01 January 2000 to 31 December 2020
Information Requested
In the time period, 1st January 2000*, to 31st December 2020 (inclusive of these dates), can you please provide monthly counts of the following:
• Members of currently employed staff who having completed a management vetting form (or similar internal vetting form), subsequently went on to have a vetting interview based on the data supplied.
• Members of currently employed staff who following the completion of the form (as detailed above) or interview, were arrested because of the information supplied.
• The outcome of the arrest (Acquitted / NFA / Prosecuted/ etc)
* If the force does not retain the information this far back, please list from the earliest month possible
A simple breakdown as follows would be sufficient (if this helps):
Month Interviewed Arrested Outcome
Jan ’00 5 0 N/A
Feb ’00 2 2 1x Prosecuted / 1x NFA
Disclosure with Exemptions
Part Disclosure with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
19 April 2022
Date of Disclosure
21 April 2022
Related Documents/Links
FOI 16091 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 points 2 and 3, Essex Police are unable to accurately extract the level of detail in relation to your request for the requested period 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 reviewing each file one by one to establish the information if held. 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:
Caveats:
The data is correct as at 19 April 2022.
The Corporate Vetting Unit was not introduced until 2006.
No vetting information is held prior to 2010 on the current vetting database.
Information held between 2000 – 2010 is held on a database called DMS and this only contains name and date vetted. This information is not stored separately or retrievable as all vetting records are individual. There is no list in existence of ‘Vetting Interviews Conducted’.
Essex Police do not conduct Vetting Interviews on any ‘New Vetting Application’.
The Essex Vetting Unit conduct all enquiries over e-mail and telephone and only as an exception would an interview be necessary.
If the employee has left, after 6 years all data is destroyed.
Members of currently employed staff who having completed a management vetting form (or similar internal vetting form), subsequently went on to have a vetting interview based on the data supplied.
Since 2013 there have been less than 10 interviews conducted by the FVM and this is reliant on Corporate Memory as there is no specific list. We cannot advise whether these are all still employed or whether they were a re-vet/ upgrade or what vetting clearance they held. Information prior to this is not available.
FOI Reference Number
16631
Request Title
Essex Police Vetting figures for 2019/20 and 2020/21
Date Range
2019 to 2021
Information Requested
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.
2. Of those vetted, please specify the number who were (i) granted full clearance and the number who (ii) did not pass vetting.
The College of Policing Approved Professional Practice guidance entitled “APP on Vetting”, published in March 2021 includes this:
"3.4 Provisional or conditional clearances may be granted to an individual based on any known risks pending full clearance being received, or when an individual has been given a period of time to address any risks through the vetting clearance process."
https://library.college.police.uk/docs/college-of-policing/Vetting-APP-2021.pdf
3. For the years 2019/20 and 2020/21, please provide the number of individuals granted provisional or conditional clearance.
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Disclosure
Information Correct as at
19 April 2022
Date of Disclosure
06 May 2022
Related Documents/Links
FOI 16631 Response
Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, Essex Police can confirm in respect of Section 1(1)(b) the following data:
Caveat: The data 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, revets 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 = 2774 completed clearances
2020 = 3963 completed clearances
2021 = 2977 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.