Responses to media enquiries

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/008359/B

Version Date: 07/07/2025

The Corporate Communications and Engagement Department has provided the following information.

Please note that some media enquiries are handled by other teams within the Corporate Communications and Engagement Department, and these may not always be logged onto the management system. This means that the true number of media enquiries will be higher.

Furthermore, up to 30 September 2024 the Department was in an alliance with Devon & Cornwall Police and enquiries relating to Dorset Police may have been responded to by someone based within Devon & Cornwall Police.

I am requesting information on how many times members of the press have contacted your force with a media enquiry and received no substantive response from your press office. 

Please treat this as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I am seeking the following information for each of the calendar years listed below:
•           2023 (1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023)
– 5,158
•           2024 (1 January 2024 – 31 December 2024)
– 5,050
•           2025 to date (1 January 2025 – date of your response)
– 2,866 (to 23 June 2025)

1. The total number of media enquiries received by your force’s press or communications office during each of the above years.

Please note the above figures are enquiries by phone and email and responses recorded on our content management system. We log completed enquiries or aim to provide a reason if we are not able to complete or respond to. Not every single media enquiry is logged and the true numbers will be higher.

2. 
   The number of those media enquiries that received no substantive response — meaning the press office did not issue any reply, or only sent a holding response without following up with a proper answer.
   For clarity, a holding response is defined for this FOI as an acknowledgement of the enquiry but no further action or reply is provided thereafter.
   
   It is not possible to quantify this accurately/reliably or provide a sufficient answer to this question as the Media Team does not record enquiries/responses on the basis of whether a ‘proper answer’ has been given. This is a value judgement and is not recorded information.

We aim to provide a substantive answer to every enquiry. Delays can be caused by the team seeking further information/sign-off internally. We do not log/respond to duplicate enquiries from the same organisation or ‘chaser’ emails.

In order to attempt to provide an accurate figure here, we would need to manually go through more than 12,000 enquiries and responses. This would not be a good use of finite police resources and would take the request over the 18 hour fee limit.

3. The current number of staff employed in your press or communications office (full-time and part-time only).
   If the information cannot be provided by calendar year, please supply it in any available format, stating the timeframe covered.
   
   

When fully staffed, the Media Team has:

• 4 full-time, 1 part-time (3 days p/w) News Team and Media Relations Officers
• 1 News Desk and Media Manager

Please note, responding reactively to press enquiries forms only one part of the work of the Media Team. The staff numbers above are not solely dedicated to this element of the service provided.