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OFFICIAL
FOI Reference: 521/2023
Request 1 - 3:
1) Please state how many of the following crimes were alleged to have occurred and recorded by your force as happening inside KFC restaurants in the financial year 2022/23.
Assault offences to include all assault offences
5D - Assault with intent to cause serious harm
8N - Assault with injury
8P - Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury
105A - Assault without injury
105B - Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury
Please note I am only interested in assaults which occurred inside the restaurants' premises. To clarify, an assault that was recorded as having happened 'down the road from' KFC would not be of interest, although one that happened inside the restaurant or at least in the doorway/entrance would be.
2) In addition, please state the addresses of the THREE KFCs in your police force area with the most alleged/recorded assault offences in 2022/23 on their premises, stating how many incidents occurred for each one.
3) Finally, please provide me with a verbatim copy of the “investigation summary field” and/or the modus operandi (MO) for the FIVE most recent cases recorded for each of the top three KFC locations. In relation to these 15 (3x5) reports I understand these will have to be redacted to remove private information.
Response 1 & 2:
I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested, as outlined below.
Financial Year |
Parc Trostre, Llanelli KFC |
London Road, Pembroke Dock KFC |
2022/23 |
1 |
1 |
Response 3:
I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested; however we are exempting part of the information as we believe that the following exemption is relevant:
Section 40(2) Personal Information:
Section 40(2) is a class-based absolute exemption. This means that the legislators when writing the legislation considered that the release of such information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 would cause harm to the public authority or individual concerned. There is therefore no requirement to carry out a HARM Test in respect of such information. There is also no requirement to carry out a Public Interest Test.
Section 40(2) applies to third party personal data and is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 if disclosure, in relation to data subject to law enforcement processing, would breach any of the data protection principles contained within Part 3 - Chapter 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018. Under Section 34 within Chapter 2 “The Controller in relation to personal data is responsible for and must be able to demonstrate, compliance with” Chapter 2. Such information would not be released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 unless there is a strong public interest. One of the main differences between the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018 is that any information released under FOI is released into the public domain, not just the individual requesting the information and disclosure under the Act must be made with that in mind. As such, any release that identifies an individual through releasing their personal data, even third party personal data is exempt.
Personal data is defined under Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 as:
“(2) ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual (subject to subsection (14)(c)).
(3) ‘Identifiable living individual’ means a living individual who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to—
(a) An identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data or an online identifier, or
(b) One or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of the individual.”
All members of the public including those employed by the force have an intrinsic right to privacy and these rights are protected by virtue of the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and a public authority must not interfere with that right. Any release of the information subject to the exemption is likely to compromise those rights.
Data Protection Act 2018
Part 3 – Law Enforcement – Chapter 2 Principles Section 35
The first data protection principle:
“(1) The first data protection principle is that the processing of personal data for any of the law enforcement purposes must be lawful and fair.”
General Data Protection Regulation
Article 5 of the GDPR – ‘Principles relating to processing of personal data’ provides:
“1. ‘Personal data’ shall be
Dyfed-Powys Police would not want to disclose any information that could potentially identify an individual. In this particular case, to release the gender details, especially taking into consideration the very low number of offences, could lead to the identification of the individuals involved and to release such information would be a direct breach of Data Protection legislation. Therefore as a consequence I am satisfied that Section 40(2) Personal Information exemption is applicable to the release of the information.
The Section 40 exemption is a class-based exemption. This means that the legislators when writing the legislation considered that the release of such information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 would cause harm to the public authority or individual concerned. There is therefore no requirement to carry out a HARM Test in respect of such information.
The Section 40 exemption is in part qualified and in part absolute, in the present case it would be absolute as to release the information would breach Data Protection legislation and therefore there is no requirement to carry out a public interest test.
Exemption Applied |
Investigation Summary Field |
Section 40(2) – Personal Information exemption applied |
xxx states xxx was assaulted xxx at KFC , xxx several times |
Section 40(2) – Personal Information exemption applied |
IP has been punched xxx xx |
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 22/02/2024)