Officers attending events at Gunnersbury Park/arrests/cost from July 2019 to September 2023

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.032877

I note you seek access to the following information:

Please provide the total number of officers attending the following events at Gunnersbury Park (Gunnersbury Park, Popes Ln, London W3 8LQ) and the total number of arrests made:

2019 – Lovebox – 12 -13 July 2019

2022 - Soho house Festival - 29 June -14 July 2022
Gunnersbury Live! – 04 - 27 August 2022
Waterworks – 05 - 23 September 2022

2023 - Soho House Festival - On from 06.07.2023 to 08.07.2023
N-Dubz plus Venbee - 11 August 2023
Kygo plus MK, SOFI TUKKER & Frank Walker - 12 August 2023
Limp Bizkit + Pendulum, KennyHoopla, Joey Valence & Brae, Deijuvhs - 13 August 2023
Joji presents Smithereens Oblivion with Lil Toe (ammo) & Savagerealm - 17 August 2023
Boygenius with MUNA and Ethel Cain - 20 August 2023
Waterworks - 16 September 2023
DnB Allstars Festival 2023 - 17 September 2023

What was the the total cost to the Met for covering these events please?

Decision

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 21 – Information reasonable accessible by other means
Section 22 – Information intended for future publication

Reason for decision

Section 21(1) - Information Accessible to Applicant by Other Means – Relating to Lovebox 2019

The purpose of the section 21 exemption is to ensure that there is no right of access to information via FOIA if it is available to the applicant by another route. To claim this exemption the data must be reasonably accessible.

Section 22(1)(a) – Information intended for future publication – Relating to N-Dubz plus Venbee, Kygo plus MK, SOFI TUKKER & Frank Walker and Limp Bizkit + Pendulum, KennyHoopla, Joey Valence & Brae, Deijuvhs

Section 22 can be engaged if, at the time of the request, the public authority has the intention to publish the specific information requested

In recent years there has been an increase in Freedom of Information Act requests. Data collation in relation to this subject matter is carried out by a team of analysts who collate, review and interpret the data acquired. This process is well established, and ensures that data that is of the public interest is available on a regular basis, and significantly also serves to reduce the financial and administrative cost of responding to requests for information under the Act. It would be both administratively and financially prohibitive for the MPS to collate and release information in response to individual requests when the information requested will be published at some future date. The Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) guidance states ‘12. Although the public authority must hold the information at the time of the request with a view to its publication, the exemption does not require a set publication date to be in place’.

The ICO’s guidance also states ‘10. The information that the public authority intends to be published must be the specific information the applicant has requested’. MO6 have confirmed that this point is satisfied. Due to public interest the MPS has identified that requests for information about large scale events are likely to be received under the Act and MO6 have made the decision to proactively publish certain event data via the publication scheme. The MPS has a strong commitment to proactively publish information in the public interest and will do so in relation to the information you have sought (3 events above).

I have also made it clear that the MPS understands the need to proactively publish information in the current public interest. Therefore MO6 have confirmed that their intention to publish the requested data soon. The public interest factors favouring disclosure will be satisfied upon publication of this information and therefore I deem it appropriate to apply a section 22 exemption to this part of this request.

Section 21 - Information Reasonably Accessible By Other Means - I am pleased to inform you that some of the information requested is already in the public domain via the publication scheme. This relates to the following event:
Lovebox 2019
Met Operations - Lovebox and Citadel Festivals

Arrests at music festivals in 2019-2021

Section 22 - Information intended for future publication - I can also confirm that the MPS hold some of the requested data with the intention to publish it via the MPS Publication Scheme. This relates to the following events:

N-Dubz plus Venbee
11 August 2023
(MO6 – Publication Scheme)

Kygo plus MK, SOFI TUKKER & Frank Walker
12 August 2023
(MO6 – Publication Scheme)

Limp Bizkit + Pendulum, KennyHoopla, Joey Valence & Brae, Deijuvhs
13 August 2023
(MO6 – Publication Scheme)

All events above were policed by MO6

This requested data will therefore not be disclosed, as it is exempt from disclosure by virtue of the following provisions of the Act:

Disclosure

Relating to the 8 remaining events
In relation to the remaining events, I will disclose the total number of arrests made at each event. However, WA BCU have confirmed that these events do not have dedicated cost codes and therefore the MPS does not hold records that are of sufficient detail from which the overall costs of these particular events can accurately be calculated nor can the total number of officers attending these events be calculated. Therefore, I am unable to supply this data.

Arrest data for 8 remaining events – Policed by WA BCU

I have attached an excel spreadsheet with the arrest data for the following events:

Soho house Festival - 29 June-14 July 2022

Gunnersbury Live! - 4-27 August 2022

Waterworks - 5-23 September 2022

2023

Soho House Festival - 6-8 July 2023

Joji presents Smithereens Oblivion with Lil Toe (ammo) & Savagerealm - 17 August 2023

Boygenius with MUNA and Ethel Cain - 20 August 2023

Waterworks - 16 September 2023

DnB Allstars Festival 2023 - 17 September 2023

Please note there are three separate tabs within the spreadsheet, titled cover sheet, notes and Report 1. The notes page should be read in conjunction with the data to ensure the report is interpreted correctly.

- For the total number of officers attending the following events and the total cost to the Met for covering these events

MO6 have confirmed that there are distinct major events, and these events are subject to dedicated resources, which means we can cost and subsequently publish that data. However, not every event fits into that category and there are many smaller events that we cannot cost for the reasons I will outline below. Lovebox 2019, N-Dubz plus Venbee, Kygo plus MK, SOFI TUKKER & Frank Walker and Limp Bizkit + Pendulum, KennyHoopla, Joey Valence & Brae, Deijuvhs are events that were policed by MO6, whereas the remaining 8 events were policed by WA BCU and significantly, do not have dedicated cost codes.

There are a number of variables that will affect the cost of policing an event, this includes:
- The number of officers posted to the event.
- If any additional hours are required for policing the event (overtime can be paid at a different rates to the core hours).
- The rank of the officers involved in policing the event.
- The number and nature of the assests deployed to the event(i.e. vehicles or other assets, which can increase as the event progresses.

This list is not exhausive, but it does provide you with a sample of the factors that would affect a event cost and underlines why we do not possess enough detail for the 8 remaining events to provide the overall costs. I will focus on two of the variables I have outlined above.

If the event is not subject to dedicated resources then how much an officer is paid is not broken down for specific event. MPS officers follow a set working pattern. You have an early turn, late turn and night duty. A late turn officer will take over from the early turn officer and a night duty officer will take over from the late turn, and finally the early turn will take over from the night duty officer. There is a 2 hour overlap to ensure a smooth handover and this also reduces overtime claims. During an event you may well have officers that will cover the full event, but sometimes events may also be covered by officers of different shift patterns. Events by their very nature can also be responded to as an emergency by officers who are on their core duties during their early or late turn and/or officers who may need to engage in overtime. Overtime claims is not data that the MPS centrally holds, so claims for overtime for a specific day would need to be individually checked to see if they came as a direct result of a particular event.

Let’s also consider that these officers would have arrived to the event in vehicles. What if vehicles have been used by officers on other incidents before or even on route to an event, or to an incident nearby Gunnersbury Park? It is my assessment that you cannot quantify if additional petrol costs have been generated from other additional stops to or from the event, as opposed to the usual daily petrol costs if an event is planned? Was the vehicle used for the entire day or just part of it? This provides just two examples of the difficulties in answering this part of the request.
As I have stated, the events in question do not have dedicated cost codes in order to search for the total number of officers attending the following events and the associated costs for the individual events and provide costings for example which officers may have been on duty at the events and how many hours they actually worked and their individual rate of pay for the time. Consequently, the MPS are unable to provide the data for this part of your request.