FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 0603-2015
In reply to your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, dated 17/07/2015
1. The five longest periods of time that a suspect has been kept on bail since pre-charge bail
was introduced in 1984. If it is not possible to search back this far, then I would like the
information going back to the earliest year on record.
2. The five longest periods suspects have been kept on bail since 1984 where no further action
was taken against the subject in relation to the allegation. Again, if it is not possible to
search back this far, then I would like the information going back to the earliest year on
record
3. Finally I would like to know the five longest ongoing periods of police bail - i.e. of the
people currently on bail from the force.
4. In all of the above cases (points 1, 2 and 3) I would like to know the age and gender of the
suspect, the police division in which they lived and a description of the crime that they
have been detained in relation too.
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”. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered
to be up to 18 hours of work on one request. This information is given in the Freedom of Information
(Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
It is estimated that it will take a minimum of 235 hours to provide an answer to this request.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary does not have any electronic method of searching our custody records
to identify the five longest periods of time that a suspect has been kept on bail since 1984. We do not
hold this information in such a record separately. A trained analyst would have to manually read through
all of the custody records for the period 1984 to current date in order to provide the information you
have requested. For the calendar year 2014 we have custody records that show 4703 people as having
been bailed during their detention. It would take a minimum of 3 minutes to read through a single
custody record to provide you with information within your requested criteria.
4703 custody records showing bail x 3 minutes = 14,109 minutes ( 235 hours )
As the above calculation demonstrates the time required to provide you with information for a single
calendar year I am unable to suggest any method by which your request could be pared down to allow
us to provide information within the cost limits allowed under the Freedom of Information Act.
If you wish to appeal our decisions, please see the attachment, which sets out your rights to appeal.