Road traffic collisions 601/2025

FOI Reference: 601/2025

Request

1 - Please provide a breakdown of how many road traffic collisions have occurred when cars on hard shoulders have been hit, since 2014.

2 - Please provide a breakdown of how many road traffic collisions have occurred when broken-down cars have been hit, since 2014.

Clarification received

Please can i have a breakdown of the reports by year. There is no need to know the date/month etc.

Further clarification received

I do not need to know the time that officers recorded the RTAs, just the year that they occured.

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.

I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

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. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:

Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to 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 25,758 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information department has been advised that some of the information in respect of Q1 & Q2 your request, is not held in an easily retrievable format. In light of this and in order to accurately obtain the information relative to your request for the time frame stipulated it would involve Dyfed Powys Police accessing and manually reviewing 70,533 incidents, as we are unable to filter the search for information requested for Road Traffic Collisions (RTC’s) occurring on hard shoulders and RTC’s occurring when broken down.  These types of incidents would be recorded as generic RTC’s on our systems.

It has also been established that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of your request.

The process outlined results in the below time estimate:-

2014        6697 RTC’s recorded

2015        6824 RTC’s recorded

2016        7182 RTC’s recorded

2017        7608 RTC’s recorded

2018        7479 RTC’s recorded

2019        6643 RTC’s recorded

2020        4572 RTC’s recorded

2021        5521 RTC’s recorded

2022        5809 RTC’s recorded

2023        6083 RTC’s recorded

2024        6115 RTC’s recorded

Total number of RTC’s recorded between 2014 – 2024 = 70,533

70,533 records x 10 minutes per record = 11,755 hours

Time estimate to complete task =  11,755 hours

In accordance therefore 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, 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 public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 27/06/2025)