FOI 0035-2025/26- Officers in schools

Request:

Q1. The number of police officers, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), or other police staff currently assigned to work in or with schools within your force area.

- Please break this down by job title (e.g. Police Officer, PCSO, etc.) and by local authority area or school (if possible).

- If available, please also distinguish between those permanently based in schools (e.g. School Liaison Officers, Safer Schools Officers) and those who visit schools as part of outreach or other duties.

Q2. A list of all schools (including school name and postcode) that currently have a designated police officer or PCSO assigned to them.

- If this would exceed the cost limit, please instead provide the total number of such schools, broken down by local authority or policing area.

Q3. For each of the last three academic years (e.g. 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24 to date), please provide the number of officers or PCSOs assigned to work in schools or with schools within your force area.

- Please include the same breakdowns as above if available.

Q4. If your force has any specific policies, protocols, or agreements relating to officers in schools (e.g. Memoranda of Understanding with schools or local authorities), please provide copies of these documents.

Response: 

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

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

Decision

Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) we can neither confirm nor deny if North Yorkshire Police does or does not hold the information you have requested. It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 12 (2) allows a public authority to refuse a request where it estimates that it would exceed to appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held.

Due to the nature of our recording systems; the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. If any officer/staff member partakes in engagement with a school within the force area as part of their role, this is not recorded in such away for it to be easily extracted for the purposes of the request, as many would partake in such work in day-to-day policing.  A manual review would be needed of officer/staff duties as well as diaries/calendars/pocket notebooks. It is not known whether the information retrieved, if possible, would be an accurate representation or reliable set of data.

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, we may be able to provide some information in relation to your request in regard to school liaison officers only. 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.