Question
During May Resources Committee Chief Superintendent Sam Donaldson gave us a breakdown of FOIs from 2022.
Can clarification be provided on how many of each of those per annum are generated by serving or past police officers - if known.
He referenced journalists, national researchers and members of the public who asked, so grateful if a break down could be provided, if available.
Answer
Under FOI Legislation, there is no requirement for an individual to identify if they are an officer, staff member, journalist, researcher etc. For a request to be valid, it must be made to the Organisation in writing and include the requester’s name, an address for correspondence, and clearly describe the information required.
The PSNI has an optional field on our web-form that an individual can choose to complete when submitting a request and, where information is identified to a member of staff processing a request, they may manually update the case to reflect this. However, as this is not mandatory there are many occasions when this field is left blank. Furthermore, as this optional field does not impact the processing of the request itself, there is no further quality assurance undertaken to verify if the information provided is accurate – this is simply used as indicative management information to try and better understand which groups most commonly seek information, and how we may be able to improve our communication with them.
The information currently held has been provided below and should be considered in line with the caveats/information provided above and in the relevant reference note.
| No. FOI Requests | 2022 FOI | 2023 FOI | 2024 FOI | 2025 (1) FOI | Grand Total FOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serving or past officers (2) | 53 | 72 | 58 | 58 | 241 |
| Journalists | 298 | 397 | 391 | 217 | 1303 |
| National researchers (3) | 55 | 60 | 57 | 31 | 203 |
| Members of the public (4) | 838 | 1046 | 1047 | 559 | 3490 |
| Total | 1244 | 1575 | 1553 | 865 | 5237 |
(1) 2025 retrieved until 30/052025 @ 1400 hours
(2) Includes internal, serving, and previous serving members only; Does not distinguish between officers and staff; Members using personal emails without identifying as members are counted as members of the public.
(3) Academic data includes all academic users; National researchers are not identified separately.
(4) Public category excludes requests from businesses, organisations, and solicitors.
Kate Laverty