Responses to media enquiries

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/003358/G

Version Date: 07/07/2025

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

Please note, 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:

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

•           2023 (1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023)
– 5,078
•           2024 (1 January 2024 – 31 December 2024)
– 5,876
•           2025 to date (1 January 2025 – 9 June 2025)
– 2,154

The above figures are enquiries by phone and email and responses recorded on our management system.

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.
   
   The department uses a logging system where all media enquiries that have been worked on are logged. We are only able to give statistics for the number of media enquiries logged in this way, please see above for details.

It is not possible to provide any data relating to how substantial the reply was and whether it would be seen as a ‘proper answer’ by the journalist. This would be a value judgement and is not recorded information.

All enquiries are marked as ‘completed’ on the system and are closed once an enquiry has been responded to/dealth with.

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.
   
   

There are currently five full-time members of staff working in the Media & Communications Team including one full-time manager. Please note, responding reactively to press enquiries forms only one part of the work of the Media & Communications Team. The staff numbers above are not solely dedicated to this element of the service provided.

The department also has a Corporate Communications Team whose members also deal with media enquiries on the topic.