FOI 0092-2025/26- Discounted salary schemes

Request:

Q1. Has the police force introduced discounted salary schemes for employees who own electric vehicles.

Q2. What information you hold on the value of vehicles purchased and sold by the police force in each year since 2015.

Q3. What information you hold on the number of petrol, diesel, hydrogen, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles purchased by the police force in each year since 2015.

Q4. What information you hold on the number of vehicles in the police fleet aged up to one year, between one and two years, between three and five years and older than five years.

Q5. What information you hold on the number of vehicles purchased by the police force in each year since 2015, broken down by car manufacturer.

Q6. What information you hold on the level of carbon emissions and source of carbon emissions for the police force in each year between 2015 and 2025.

Q7. What information you hold on start and end dates for lease agreements held by the police force for its vehicle fleet.

Q8. What information you hold on the number and proportion of police vehicles that were petrol, diesel, hydrogen, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fully electric in each year between 2015 and 2025.

Q9. What discussions the police force has had with Distribution Network Operators on steps to accelerate the upgrades to substations near charging points for police electric vehicles.

Response:

Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information

To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police.

I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by North Yorkshire Police. 

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the following information to you.

I am exempting details of any vehicles used in a specialist capacity/covert manner, pursuant to section 31(1)(a) Law Enforcement. Please see the exemption explanation below.

Q1. On 7^th April 2025, North Yorkshire Police launched a Salary Sacrifice Fleet Scheme which is open to Police Officers and Staff.

Q2. Please see the table below showing the number of vehicles purchased/sold between 2015 and 2025, broken down by year and cost.

Year	Purchased/cost	Sold/cost
2015	31 - £1141229.12	£38567.35
2016	34 - £38567.35	1 - £9420.25
2017	14 - £14589.76	1 - £2900.00
2018	29 - £15453.11	1 - £1350.00
2019	21 -  £129499.75	13 - £21017.78
2020	19 - £70076.26	7 - £17816.68
2021	29 - £49447.87	5 - £15760.00
2022	67 - £84972.78	8 - £2692.01
2023	65 - £186011.34	15 - £25258.17
2024	4 - £805626.22	67 - £138277.01
2025	2 - £43719.58	4 - £6538.50

*please note no information held for the number of sold vehicles in the year 2015.

Q3 & Q8. Please see the table below the current fleet list broken down by fuel type of vehicle.

Type	Count
Diesel	366
Electric	1
Electric diesel	6
Petrol hybrid	3
Petrol	8

*Due to the changes in numbers throughout the year, we are only able to provide current numbers and are unable to provide data for the previous years.

Q4. Please see the table below showing the number of vehicles in North Yorkshire Police fleet, broken down by age of vehicle.

Age	Count
Up to one year	0
One to two years	173
Three to five years	84
Over five years	127

Q5. Please see the table below showing the number of vehicles purchased by North Yorkshire Police between 2015 and 2025, broken down by year and make of vehicle.

Year	Purchased/Make
2015	Ford - 11 Peugeot - 11 Vauxhall - 9
2016	Ford – 20 Peugeot – 11 Skoda – 1 Vauxhall - 2
2017	Ford – 5 Peugeot – 8 Volkswagen - 1
2018	Vauxhall - 1 Peugeot - 22 Ford - 6
2019	Peugeot - 16 Ford - 5
2020	Peugeot - 10 Ford - 5 Mercedes - 3 Vauxhall - 1
2021	Peugeot – 27 Ford - 2
2022	Vauxhsll - 34 Peugeot - 33
2023	Peugeot – 41 Ford – 5 Vauxhall - 19
2024	Peugeot - 4
2025	Peugeot - 2

Q6. No information held

Q7. No information held – as we do not have lease vehicles

Q9. DNO Northern Powergrid is proactively engaging with BlueLight emergency services in its area and NYP is in regular contact with them over future demand scenarios.

Exemption Explantation

Section 31 – Law Enforcement
Section 31 is a prejudice-based qualified exemption and there is a requirement to articulate the harm as well as carrying out a public interest test.  

Evidence of Harm
As you may be aware, disclosure under FOIA is a release to the public at large. Whilst not questioning the motives of the applicant, releasing any information held regarding specialist vehicles into an open forum would provide criminals/terrorists with available data of current resources.  This would be to the detriment of providing an efficient policing service and a failure in providing a duty of care to all members of the public.

Although it is seen that some policing procedures should be transparent and that the requested information may appear harmless, it is still readily available data held within the public domain that can be accessed and used by known criminals/terrorist.  As the threat from terrorism cannot be ignored, it is generally recognised that the international security landscape is increasingly complex and unpredictable. The Police are there to support the public and deliver effective law enforcement, therefore any data that would compromise policing operations would be detrimental in providing an efficient policing service and a failure in providing a duty of care to all members of the public.

Information that undermines the operational integrity of the police will adversely affect public safety and have a negative impact on both national security and law enforcement.  Therefore, it has been determined that the release of all the information requested would not be in the public interest.

Factors favouring disclosure under Section 31
Some information is already within the public domain, however not in a collective format.

Information would ensure transparency and accountability about costs and force resources. 

Factors against disclosure under Section 31
It has been recorded that FOIA releases are monitored by criminals and terrorists and so releasing information held relating to specialist vehicles in a collective format would undermine and compromise law enforcement and it would also hinder any local, regional or national operations, especially where other FOIs request a breakdown in data held. 

It can be argued that there are significant risks associated with providing information in relation to any aspects that can assist criminal planning, such as identifying available resources.

The Police Service would not wish to reveal resource information that would undermine the law enforcement operations and would impact on overall policing,  as more crime would be committed because criminals/terrorists would know which forces had less/more capability.  This in turn would place the public at a greater risk and a fear of crime would be realised, especially for more vulnerable areas. 

Balance test
The security of the public and the country is of paramount importance and the Police service will not divulge the resources, if to do so would place the safety of individuals at risk, due to providing freely available (single point) information under such requests and which in turn would undermine National Security or compromise law enforcement. 

Whilst there is a public interest in the transparency of policing resources and providing assurance that the police service is appropriately prepared and effectively engaging with the threat posed by various groups or individuals, there is a very strong public interest in safeguarding the integrity of police resources and operations in the highly sensitive areas such as crime prevention, public disorder and terrorism prevention.

As much as there is public interest in knowing that policing activity is appropriate and balanced this will only be overridden in exceptional circumstances. It is therefore our opinion that for these issues the balancing test is in favour of none disclosure of specific information relating to your request.

Pursuant to Section 17(1) of the Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice in response to your request.

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.