Speeding in Pembroke 518/2024

FOI Reference: 518/2024

Request:

Information request between 17th September 2023 and 17th April 2024.

Request for:

Amount of speeding convictions for the Pembroke and Pembroke Dock areas.

Amount of penalty notices for speeding in Pembroke and Pembroke Dock areas.

Amount of warnings for speeding in the Pembroke and Pembroke Dock areas.

For clarification, the areas requested to cover postcode areas SA71 and SA72.

Amount of convictions for drug offences in the SA71 area from 01/01/2023 to 30/03/2024

Amount of warnings for drug offences covering the same dates.

Clarification Q:

Q1a - Do you wish to know the number of people who were stopped by an officer and then found guilty at court for speeding?  Alternatively, do you wish to know the number of drivers stopped by an officer and issued with a Conditional Offer? Or both?

Q1b - are you referring to those charged to court or found guilty at court?

Q2 - when you ask " amount of warnings for drug offences, are you referring to incidents or crimes? Please note an incident is different from a crime.  An incident is a record of contact made to a police force by an individual/member of public (usually via a 999 or 101 call) and a crime is where the threshold has been met for the police force to deem that a criminal offence has occurred as defined by law.

Clarification A:

Q1A. Both.

Q1B.  Those charged to court. 

Q2A. Incidents and crimes please.

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 62.6 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. Therefore, in order to establish what information, if any, is held in relation to the request would require the individual interrogation of all traffic offence reports over the time frame specified to identify if the incident in question occurred in the Pembroke & Pembroke Dock areas. It has been established that for the period as specified within the request (i.e. last 12 months) there are a total 940 traffic offence reports that would require researching. It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 4 minutes to research a single traffic offence report for relevance to your request as outlined above, resulting in the following time estimate.

940 Traffic Offence Reports x 4 minutes = 62.6 hours

Total of 62.6 hours to complete task

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.       

Although excess cost removes the forces obligations under the Freedom of Information Act to provide any further information, as a gesture of goodwill, I have provided information, relative to question 2 of your request which has been easily retrievable and outlined below. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.

Response for Q2

Please be advised that the relevant departments have advised that a response can be provided within the appropriate time limit, i.e. 18 hours, in relation to the number of convictions for drug offences in a specified area.

Please note that the only warnings for drug offences we hold are Outcome-7 Cannabis warnings.

Drug warnings aren’t issued anymore, Conditional cautions (CC) and Adult Community Resolutions (ACR) are used instead. If you would like CC & ACR data, please submit a new FOI request.                                            

It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.

Furthermore, it should also be noted that Police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide crime statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the crime data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force's response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 02/08/2024)