Police personnel working across the national Counter Terrorism Policing Network

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.21.022220

I note you seek access to the following information:

I would like to request sex disaggregated data for police personnel working across the national Counter Terrorism Policing Network the UK between 2000 and 2021. If you can state the numbers of female officers in Counter Terrorism Policing each year, that would be ideal.

I would also like to know how many of those women are Muslim.

You further clarified this request on 09/12/2021 as follows:

I would like to proceed with a FOI request that is more narrow in scope. I would like to obtain information about the number of female police officers and female staff members within CTPHQ at the Metropolitan Police, between 2000 and 2021. I would also like to know how many of those women are Muslim – both at the officer level and in general staffing terms.

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full which covers the terms of your redefined request within the restrictions on what we can provide outlined below.

Firstly, it should be noted that due to organisational restructuring we are not able to provide data for CTPHQ staff prior to 2016. Secondly, please be advised that Religion is self-classified by individuals and its recording is not mandatory. Therefore the actual number of Muslim officers or staff could be higher than shown. No religion data is available prior to 2020.

In regards to the information requested, to provide an annual breakdown would require reviewing 60 months of data to determine whether each individual officer or member of staff worked in CTPHQ during any of the months within this period.

Unfortunately, this process would take in excess of 18 hours to locate, retrieve and extract the data and therefore would have resulted in a cost refusal, as defined in the Act, with an opportunity to redefine your request being offered. However, rather than issue you with this type of response, we are able to provide you with data for the average number of officers and staff within CTPHQ for the period 2016 – 2021. Please see the table below.

Average number of female Officers employed by CTPHQ 2016-2021	Average number of female Officers recorded as Muslim since March 2020	Average number of female Staff employed by CTPHQ 2016-2021	Average number of female Staff recorded as Muslim since March 2020
58	0	192	5