2022/25107 - Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship

REQUEST

Please provide the following information.

How many applications have you received for enrolment on the course?

How many from the total number of applications that you have received was an applicant enrolled on the course?

How many of the total number enrolled on the course have dropped out before the course has been completed of their own choice?

How many of the people enrolled on the course have been asked to leave the course for whatever reason?

What has been the financial cost to the force where a student has dropped out of the course either of their own choosing or being asked to leave the course by the force and/or the university?

RESPONSE

1. 542 have applied for this course since becoming available

2. 179 have commenced PCDA

3. 24 dropped out

4. 4 have been asked to leave

5. Unfortunately, we cannot answer this request as it will exceed the 18-hour time limit to complete this request. There are multiple factors across university, other training costs, uniform, equipment etc.  In order to retrieve the data, each section would need to be reviewed.  It would take anything from ten minutes to thirty minutes to review each individual record, which would exceed the 18-hour time frame. Therefore, a Section 12 Excess Cost exemption has been applied.

Section 12 – Excess Cost

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.” 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.