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Home - 04 May 2018 – 1153.2017-18 – Social media

04 May 2018 – 1153.2017-18 – Social media

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 1153.2017-18 

I write in connection with your request for information which was received by Office of Police and Crime Commissioner on 26 January 2018.  Please accept our apologies for the delay in providing you with a response. I note you seek access to the following information:

  1. Does your organisation have a Facebook Page(s)? If yes, what is/are the url(s) and when were they set up?
  2. Does your organisation advertise or spend any money on Facebook? If yes, please can you outline what expenditure has occurred and break down expenditure per calendar year (January to December) since 2004?
  3. Does your organisation have a Twitter Account? If yes, what is/are the url(s) and when were they set up?
  4. Does your organisation advertise or spend any money on Twitter? If yes, please can you outline what expenditure has occurred and break down expenditure per calendar year (January to December) since 2006?
  5. Does your organisation use Google G-Suite services (Google services) or does your organisation rely on google for any services (such as email hosting)? If yes, what are the services, when were they agreed and how much did they cost?
  6. Does your organisation advertise or spend any money on Google? If yes, please can you outline what expenditure has occurred and break down expenditure per calendar year (January to December) since the payments first began?
  7. Is there an official policy for the use of organisational Facebook or Twitter Accounts (ie how to post, what to use it for and when to delete or preserve records)? If there is a policy (or policies) please may I be provided with them?

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information.

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format.

Any expenditure for Facebook and Twitter services is not recorded against their names on the accounting system, Facebook and Twitter are not set up as suppliers.  The payments are made using purchase cards.  Therefore, in order to provide any figures in relation to your request it would be necessary to manually work through all of the returns for all of the purchase cards in the organisation for each of the years since 2012, when the Office of Police and Crime Commissioner commenced, to see what expenditure was made.

This process of retrieval would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act.

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit).  However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still received the information within the cost threshold.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.

Complaint Rights

Your attention is drawn to the attached sheet which details your right of complaint.

If you have any queries concerning this request, please contact me quoting the reference number above.