current owners of former Avon and Somerset Police vehicles

Response

I can neither confirm nor deny that we hold any information relevant to your request as the duty in S1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:    

   

• Section 40(5), personal information    

   

This is an absolute exemption and therefore there is no requirement to conduct a harm or public interest test. We will neither confirm nor deny whether information is held if it constitutes personal data and would contravene any of the data protection principles set out in:    

   

(a) Article 5(1) of the GDPR, and    

(b) Section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.    

   

Your request refers to information specific to a vehicle with a specified Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM). That VRM would be the personal information of the current owner of that vehicle. As such, to confirm or deny whether information is held in relation to your request would reveal whether we hold information relating to identifiable individuals.   

   

Such confirmation or denial would in itself reveal personal information. This would be in contravention with the data protection principles, in particular the principle that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner (Article 5(1)(a)).    

  

This serves as a refusal notice under section 17(1) of the FOI Act. 

 

Outside of our obligations under the Act, I can advise that any former Avon and Somerset police cars disposed of through sale, are sold as seen as per the conditions of the trade auction channel that they were sold through. Where service history is available, this is provided in the vehicle at the point of disposal. Avon and Somerset Police would be unable to provide any further information on the history, service location, photos, role or any other information on a sold vehicle.  

 

A publicly available source of vehicle data which may assist you is the Hire Purchase Investigation (HPI) check where vehicle history is publicly available to buyers.