FOI 0340-2025/26 - PCSO costs

Request

Q1. Please provide a list of the costs associated with onboarding a PCSO, to be broken down as follows: recruitment cost, training cost, laptop cost (if issued), cost to provide all other equipment & uniform.

Q2. Please also provide a figure, if known, of how many staff members your force employs that are neurodiverse. Please separate these into police staff, police officers and PCSOs.

Response

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. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

In order to retrieve the requested information in relation to internal training costs, it would be necessary to ascertain the number of hours Trainers, SME’s have contact with the students and then looking at individual pay scales. Other factors would need to be considered in other resourcing such as rooms, heat/light, travel costs and the cost of external venues, this manual process 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, we may be able to provide some information for the rest of the request if you resubmit and omit the breakdown of training .  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.