Drone/UAV related calls 15/24
FOI Reference: 15/2024
Request:
1. For the period 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2022 can you please tell me how many drone/UAV related calls per month were received and logged by Dyfed-Powys Police with a breakdown of the specific nature of each call
2. Out of the total number of incidents recorded during this period how many successful convictions were there.
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 2,250 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm
The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in relation to Question 1 of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. This is due to the fact that on our police recording system we do not have a filter/category for Drones/UAV’s and these calls might fall under a number of call categories, i.e “Anti-social behaviour” and “Suspicious”.
Therefore, in order to ascertain if there is any information relevant to your request, every call record, related to the above categories recorded during the timeframe specified would require interrogation to see if there are any relevant details.
It has been established that there are a total of 13501 crimes recorded that would require individual interrogation and it has been estimated that it would take an average of 10 minutes to research each individual record. The relevant time estimate is detailed below:
2022 ASB reports= 4304 records x 10minutes = 717 hours
2022 Suspicious Activity reports = 9197records x 10 minutes = 1533 hours
Total time estimate for Question 1 = 2250 hours
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. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact me.
It should also be noted, the FOI department has been advised that in relation to Question 2 of your request, that it would also take over the 18hour limit to obtain the requested information. There are 109 ASB/Suspicious activity offence records covering the request timeframe, and a manually review of each of these records would need to be carried out to see if it relates to drone/UAV use, with it taking an estimated 10 minutes to review each record, it would take a total of 18.2 hours to ascertain whether there were any offence records recorded. Following this it would take further work to review any relevant offence records to establish whether there were any ‘successful convictions’, this time estimate would depend on how many relevant offence records there were.
Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.
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 27/02/2024)