The First-tier Tribunal has dismissed an appeal against the National Police Chiefs' Council's refusal to confirm whether it holds information on the proportion of Chinese-manufactured surveillance cameras used by UK police forces, finding that the cost of establishing whether the information existed would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Judge Stephen Roper, sitting with members Raz Edwards and Marion Saunders, held in Norgren v Information Commissioner and National Police Chiefs' Council [2026] UKFTT 1295 (GRC), published on 10 September, that the Commissioner's decision notice of July 2024 was correct and that the NPCC had also complied with its duty to provide advice and assistance under section 16.
Bjoern-Victor Norgren had asked the NPCC in March 2024 for:
1. The percentage of security and surveillance cameras with China as country of origin used by UK police, and how that percentage had changed between 2021 and 2024.
2. What active steps had been taken to end reliance on Chinese imports, with reference to "Project Defend", and what follow-up steps were being taken to ensure long-term implementation.
3. Whether UK police had increased sourcing of UK, EU or US-manufactured cameras, and by what percentage.
4. What steps were being taken to stop sourcing Hikvision, Dahua and Huawei products.
The NPCC initially responded that it did not hold the information. During the Commissioner's investigation it issued a revised response relying on section 12(2), stating that no central function captured the information and that exhaustive searches to establish whether it was held would exceed 18 hours. The Commissioner accepted that estimate as reasonable, noted that the NPCC occupies rented premises and owns no cameras of its own, and found the request could not meaningfully be refined.
Section 12 provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request where it estimates the cost would exceed the appropriate limit, set by the Fees Regulations at £450 for authorities outside Part I of Schedule 1, equivalent to 18 hours at £25 an hour. Section 12(2) extends the exemption to the duty to confirm or deny under section 1(1)(a) where the cost of that step alone would exceed the limit.
Only the costs of determining whether information is held, locating it, retrieving it and extracting it may be counted. The exemption is not subject to a public interest test.
Norgren argued that the public had a right to know the extent to which their security and privacy were compromised by foreign-made surveillance equipment, that the NPCC ought to maintain accurate inventories of equipment used across policing, and that it was implausible the information was not held centrally. The Tribunal said it recognised those concerns but that they were not relevant to whether section 12(2) was engaged.
The NPCC's witness, the deputy manager of the National Police Freedom of Information and Data Protection Unit, gave evidence that the NPCC is a coordinating body rather than an operational force, that information is spread across numerous committees, portfolios and working groups hosted by individual forces, that its own databases contained nothing within scope, and that enquiries of the two most relevant portfolios, the National Surveillance Lead and the CCTV Working Group, had returned nothing. Establishing conclusively whether any information was held would require contacting large numbers of portfolios and working groups individually, and estimates of the time involved exceeded the limit. Roper said the witness gave a clear and credible first-hand account that was not challenged by any contrary evidence.
The Tribunal found the request very broad, extending across all UK policing, several years, procurement decisions and strategic policy, and covering custody suites, buildings, vehicles, drones and covert operations. Norgren had not offered any practical alternative methodology for locating the information within the limit. His reliance on reports of surveillance technology reviews, including Project Defend, which the NPCC said was a Home Office initiative its witness knew nothing about, did not establish that the NPCC held the information even if such reviews existed.
On section 16, the Tribunal found the request clearly worded and not in need of clarification, and that given its breadth there was no feasible way of refining it to bring it within the limit, so no further advice and assistance could reasonably have been expected.
The Commissioner did not attend the hearing and was content for the appeal to be determined on the papers. The NPCC was represented by Jack Palmer of counsel.
