28/01/2025 – To West Midlands Police (WMP), Freedom of information Request Reference: 1359A/25
15/07/2025 – West Midlands Police issue an apology* but state no accusation was made.
* an apology was issued yet WMP had apparently not located the offending email; could not know whether it had been sent and if so, by whom.
15/07/2025 – rather than respond online to a request for an Internal review of an FoIA request, WMP seek a conversation.
16/07/2025 – following a conversation, WMP wrote:
Thank you for the really useful discussion on the telephone in relation to this request.
My formal IR response is that the answer to your question is “no information held” and therefore the response you were given is correct.
Outside of the Act – I stated I knew that Section 177 of DPA 2018 was
a) not the right legislation to refer to if we were intent on considering enforced subject access requests and
b) the accusations of enforced SARs was not the right thing for us to do.
I apologise again formally. This concludes the internal review.
Accusation or no accusation?
16/07/2025 @ 15:01 – WMP Force Information Management Lead to PSD (professional standards department) Complaints:
- The delays in communicating were unacceptable
- a member of staff who emailed accusing them of enforced SARs did so without just cause. Not only that, but
- they quoted the wrong legislation, adding further confusion to an already emotive interaction.
I have provided feedback to this member of staff that in no uncertain terms should this repeat again, and have educated them on the correct part of the legislation to use*
* ‘disciplinary action within a matter of hours?
03/08/2025 – an Internal Review of the ‘not held’ stance was requested:
Whilst I appreciate your response was an IR, your findings cannot possibly be correct.
I remind you that, during our conversation, you explained being unable to find a reference to WMP’s use of section 177. This was because you had only searched emails between WMP and me.
I referred you to the original email, sent to another, and forwarded to me.
That the section 177 email dates from 10/2024 and contains your enforced SAR warning* text, it appears the phrase was required previously. The text appears not to have been reviewed until mid-July 2025, despite my earlier writing on the subject.
The disclosure, as a result of this request, will include the template document/warning text, when this was created and to whom it was sent and when. Additionally, at the very least, the email received about our approach – is it the case that this was the first usage of your warning text and it has never been used since?