Women falling from height 916/23
FOI Reference: 916/2023
Request:
We would like to request the following information from you to better understand incidents of women falling from height where serious injury or death occurs.
- Can you tell us how many reports of women falling from height the height of a building or public place were made to you between 1973 and 2023;
- How many of those falls resulted in death?
- In how many cases were there witnesses to the fall?
- How many of these cases had a marker of domestic abuse relating to the woman who fell, her address or a partner or family member;
- How many of these cases led to a charge of homicide or attempted homicide, GBH or ABH;
- Were there any convictions? … and if so please can you specify.
For all the questions, we would need data from the period of 1973-2023.
Clarification:
Applicant clarified they would like information for both crimes and incidents.
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 96,664 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 the whole request is not held in an easily retrievable format. This is due to the fact that there is no specific category to record the requested information. Therefore, in order to ascertain if there is any information relevant to your request, every crime and incident record created during the timeframe specified would require interrogation to see if there are any relevant details in the ‘free text’ area of the record.
It has been established that there are a total of 208,093 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:
2017 – 26733 crimes x 10mins = 4455.5 hours
2018 – 29575 crimes x 10mins = 4929.1 hours
2019 – 33214 crimes x 10mins = 5535.6 hours
2020 – 32309 crimes x 10mins = 5384.8 hours
2021 – 40962 crimes x 10mins = 6827 hours
2022 – 45300 crimes x 10mins = 7550 hours
2023 (up till 12th May) – 15560 crimes x 10mins = 2593 hours
Total time estimate for crimes = 208,093 records x 10mins per record = 34,682.17 hours
Please note due to limitations of data recorded in Police Systems, only crime records since 2017 are searchable currently and also owing to a system change over, records after 12/05/23 until present are not currently searchable, but this will be rectified in time.
It has been established that there are a total of 371,895 relevant incidents 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:
2016- 54,117 x 10minutes per record = 9,019.5 hours.
2017- 85,508 x 10minutes per record = 15,676.4 hours.
2018- 37,627 x 10minutes per record = 6,271.1 hours.
2019- 37,521 x 10minutes per record = 6,253.5 hours.
2020- 37,103 x 10minutes per record = 6,183.8 hours.
2021- 42,344 10minutes per record = 7,057.3 hours.
2022- 42,614 10minutes per record = 7,102.3 hours.
2023(up to 31.10.23) – 35,061 10minutes per record = 5,843.5 hours.
Total time estimate for incidents = 371,895 x 10minutes per record = 61,982.5 hours
Total time estimate for the request= 96,664.67 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.
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 01/02/2024)