Electric scooter incidents 998/2023
FOI Reference: 998/2023
Request:
Please could you provide the total number of reports your police force has received this year so far (2023) about incidents involving electric scooters? Please also provide the total number for last year (2022) and 2021.
Please provide the total number of reports received about incidents involving electric scooters and please provide a breakdown of the total number of reports for each category of incident in each year. So, how many incidents reported involved a road collision with other vehicles or pedestrians, how many involved an electric scooter being stolen, how many involved anti-social behaviour and crimes etc. until the full number of different types of reports received involving electric scooters is reflected. Please provide the numbers for each of the above years.
Please provide the total number of, and the details of, incidents which led to formal action being taken such as arrests or charges. So how many arrests, charges or other types of formal action such as cautions have there been in relation to reports of incidents involving electric scooters and what were they for? And how many of these have resulted in convictions and, also, what were those for? Again please provide this information for all of the years above.
Please ensure that within the information requested above, it is clear how many alleged crimes involving an electric scooter have been recorded by your force for each of the years above, and please provide a breakdown of all the different types of crimes that were recorded in each year, so how many reports of anti-social behaviour involving an electric scooter were there, how many thefts involving an e-scooter were there and so on. If it requires free-searching terms in your database with the words ‘electric scooter’ or any other configuration please do so.
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 22,311 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.
In relation to your whole request there is no incident category specifically for e-scooter incidents and the system used to record incidents is unable to carry out a keyword search therefore all incidents recorded within the specified timeframe, under the most relevant incident categories, would require an individual interrogation in order to establish whether or not the information requested is recorded.
It has been established that there is a total of 133,866 records that would require interrogation and it has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to interrogate a single record, resulting in the following broken down time estimate.
2021 – 38,414 x 10 minutes per record = 6,402.3 hours
2022 - 55,158 x 10 minutes per record = 9,193 hours
2023 to date- 40,294 x 10 minutes per record = 6,715.7 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.
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 17.01.2024)