FOI 0199-2025/26 - Neurodivergent officers

Request:

Q1. How many police officers do you have in your organisation that are neurodivergent, can this data be broken down per condition and or rank (i.e. autism, ADHD, dyslexia etc)?

Q2. Do you have data on neurodivergent people who have applied/ been successful or failed the sgt promotion process?

Q3. What is the process in your force for the PC-Sgt promotion.

Q4. What support is offered to autistic/ neurodivergent candidates as part of the PC-Sgt promotion process?

Q5 .Does your force have a neurodiversity strategy or policy? Of so could you provide a copy of summary?

Q6. Has the force conducted any reviews or evaluations on how inclusive the pc-sgt promotion process if for autistic/ neurodivergent officers? If yes can you provide a summary/ report?

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.

Q1. No information held - North Yorkshire Police officers are not obliged to disclose a disability.

Q2. Please see the table below showing the number of individuals who applied for the most recent sgt promotion in March 2025 that declared as neurodivergent on application, broken down by outcome.

Q3. The information you have requested is published on the North Yorkshire Police website under the following link:

recruitment-selection-and-appeals-procedure.pdf.

I have therefore decided to exempt providing you with a response to question 3 pursuant to Section 21 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please see the exemption explanation below.

Q4. Positive Action is mentioned on the advert and a member of the team also attended the familiarisation event which was run to offer support. The Positive Action Team speak to people about reasonable adjustments and also offer support with applications by way of checking these over. The Talent Development team are also available for 1 to 1 interview support, which is available to all internal applicants.

Q5. No information held – as currently we do not have a strategy soley specific to neurodiversity in place.

Q6. No information held – currently not completed

Exemption Explanation

Section 17 of the Act requires North Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Section 21 – Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means

Section 21 is an absolute class based exemption and I am not required to consider the harm or public interest when applying this exemption.

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.