Number of Police Officers - Sickness - Mental Health Issues - 2019 to 2021
Keywords
Sickness, Mental, Health, Issues, Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, Stress, Sick, Leave, Psychological, Alcohol, Drug, Dependency, Bereavement, Bipolar disorder, Exhaustion, Insomnia, Hospital, Treatment, M.E., Chronic fatigue, Nervous exhaustion, Post-natal depression, Shock, Headcount.
Publication Number
PUB 1152
FOI Reference Number
16768
Request Title
Number of Police Officers - Sickness - Mental Health Issues - 2019 to 2021
Date Range
2019 to 2021
Information Requested
For 2019;
A. The number of individual police officers within your force to have reported mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
B. The number of individual police officers within your force to have had one or more days sick leave because of mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
C. The total number of days police officers have been absent because of sick days due to mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
For 2020;
A. The number of individual police officers within your force to have reported mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
B. The number of individual police officers within your force to have had one or more days sick leave because of mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
C. The total number of days police officers have been absent because of sick days due to mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
For 2021;
A. The number of individual police officers within your force to have reported mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
B. The number of individual police officers within your force to have had one or more days sick leave as a result of mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
C. The total number of days police officers have been absent because of sick days due to mental health issues (including a breakdown of depression, anxiety, PTSD, stress…etc.)
Disclosure with Exemptions
Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption
Information Correct as at
14 March 2022
Date of Disclosure
18 March 2022
Related Documents/Links
N/A
FOI 16768 Response
Essex Police has made enquiries within the force, however, Essex Police is unable to comply with Section 1(1)(a) by virtue of exemption Section 12(2).
Section 12 of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to:
1) “…comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”
2) Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of Section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
The following explanation outlines the difficulty Essex Police has in answering your request:
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.
In response to the number of reports in Question A for each year of your request, this would entail contacting all the District Policing Areas/Commands/Departments within Essex Police to establish if any such information was held as there is no central log.
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(2) 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, which is in part a copy of a previous disclosure, for another FOI request seeking a wider timeframe:
Caveat: The data is correct as at 14/03/2022.
The figures below include all types of psychological sickness, which include Alcohol/Drug Dependency, Anxiety, Bereavement, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Exhaustion, Insomnia, Hospital Treatment, M.E./Chronic Fatigue, Nervous Exhaustion, Post-Natal Depression, PTSD, Shock and Stress.
Please note - that 'Days' as a standalone figure lacks context (i.e. if two forces had taken the same number of days sick to stress, but one force had a much smaller or higher headcount, then they are not comparable), we have therefore added the average force headcounts and days lost per person to provide that context.
|
Date |
Days |
Avg Headcount |
Avg Days per Person |
|
2016/2017 |
14782.51 |
2941.0 |
5.03 |
|
2017/2018 |
12618.92 |
2969.5 |
4.25 |
|
2018/2019 |
11059.66 |
3097.5 |
3.57 |
|
2019/2020 |
11597.99 |
3262.5 |
3.55 |
|
2020/2021 |
9002.58 |
3432.5 |
2.62 |
|
2021/2022* |
10001.49 |
3551.0 |
2.82 |
*2021/22 is year to date, covering the period 01/04/2021 to 28/02/2022.
Every effort is made to ensure that figures provided are accurate and complete, however, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not primarily for the production of statistical information. Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries the results are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system and could also be inaccurate as a result of free text entry fields. Care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting data.
In an effort to assist under Section 16 of the FOIA, you may find the following link to related articles of interest:
Sick Leave and Occupational Health Referrals 2019 to 2021 | Essex Police
General Police Workforce data for England and Wales Police can be found via the below link and includes data up to 31 March 2021:
Police workforce England and Wales statistics | Home Office
The data tables contain the following:
• Police Officers by Force area, including rank, gender and ethnicity breakdowns, promotions, joiners, leavers, length of service, Police Objective Analysis (POA) functions, long-term sick leave, and long-term absence.
• Police Staff by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, leavers, POA functions.
• Police Community Support Officers by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, leavers, POA functions.
• Special Constables by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, and leavers.
Further ethnic breakdowns for England and Wales Police by Region and Force area can be found via the below link and includes data up to 31 March 2020: