101 reports 608/23

FOI Reference: 608/2023

Request:

• How many 101 reports were made (and given a DP ref.) in 2021 & 2022?

NB: Reduce to a few months of 2021, if it will take more than 18hrs

• How many of those reports were investigated and how many were not investigated?

Response:

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:   (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information you have requested. However we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(1) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Section 12 (1) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(1) states: “…Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 20,966 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information department has been advised that the information in respect of question 2 of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. Therefore, in order to establish what information is held in relation to question 2 of the request would require the individual interrogation of all incidents over the time frame specified to identify if the incident in question was investigated or not. It has been established that for the period as specified within the request (i.e. 2021 – 2022) there are a total 125,796 incidents that would require researching. It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to research a single incident for relevance to question 2 of your request as outlined above, resulting in the following broken down time estimate.

2021 = 65,357 incidents at 10 minutes per incident =  10,892.83.hours

2022 = 60,439 incidents at 10 minutes per incident = 10,073.17 hours

Total of 20,966 hours to complete task

Please note: The number of incidents outlined above is the answer to question 1 of your request,

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the WHOLE of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, however with due regard to the time estimate provided above it is unlikely that refining your request will fall under the 18 hours as the same method and format will have to be undertaken. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.                                   

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 18/07/23)