Rural crime 459/2024

FOI Reference: 459/2024

Request:

1.    Total number of full-time police officers employed by your force, and the number of civilians within your police area 

 

2.     a) Whether you have a unit dedicated to rural crime. 

b)  If so, please outline how many members of staff are in this unit, and how much funding it receives as part of your overall budget. 

c) Do you have a policy to determine the apportionment of budget between Rural / Urban – if so please provide

 

3.    Please complete the following equipment table:

Your force’s current inventory of the following items:	Current Inventory	% of inventory allocated principally to Rural Crime
High-power torches
Microchip scanners
Thermal spotters
Dedicated Rural Drone surveillance kits
Mobile ANPR Camera
4x4 vehicles (Quad, SUV etc)

 

4.    Number of reported cases in your police area over the past twelve months of the following crime categories (if you do not categorise in the same way please share details of the most appropriate data subset): 

Flytipping 

Sheep rustling

Hare coursing

Poaching

Machinery / GPS theft 

Livestock worrying

Heritage Crime

Raptor Persecution

Unauthorised Encampments

 

5.    What training is available to staff on rural crime – please complete the following table

	Is training available to call handlers and police staff on the following crime categories	If available -how often is the training updated
Flytipping
Sheep rustling
Hare coursing
Poaching
Machinery / GPS theft
Livestock worrying
Heritage Crime
Raptor Persecution
Unauthorised Encampments

 

6.    Number of full-time police officers employed exclusively to tackle crime within your police area, who have never been, and will never be, re-deployed to support urban issues as needed. If the answer is zero, I will assume you have no regulations or policies in place to stop force members being drawn into urban issues. 

A) Is there a universal tag for the crimes listed in question 4,and if so;

B) is your force able to access data sets to compare these crimes with other police areas.

 

7.    For 999 calls where a police officer(s) were deployed from your force, what was the average time from the call being received in your control room, to the officer(s) reaching their deployment destination for calls graded “Immediate” in the past year – a) in the whole force area and b) specifically within rural areas within your force parameter. 

A) In the last year how many 999 calls relating to the categories in Question 4; a) did and b) did not receive an in person response.

B) How many 999 calls of all types in total A) did and B) did not receive and in person response

 

8.    In the last year, in relation to Section 60C-E of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which provides a criminal offence for “residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle”: 

a.) how many arrests were made by your force?

b.) how many times have the associated seizure and forfeiture powers been used? 

c.) In addition how many times has your force exercised powers under: 

d.) s61 to remove trespassers with a common purpose of residing on land; 

e.) or s62A to direct trespassers to an alternative site?

 

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.

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.

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information you have requested. However we are withholding some of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(1) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Section 12 (1) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(1) states: “…Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect of 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 3,745 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm

The Freedom of Information Unit has been advised that the information requested in relation to question 7 is not held in an easily retrievable format and would exceed the appropriate time limit, i.e. 18 hours, to retrieve. This is due to the fact that we do not have the capability to analyse the response times. We do not differentiate between urban and rural response times.

It has been estimated that to individual interrogate each STORM report would take approximately 10 minutes per suspect. It has been established that there are a total of 22,473 crimes that would require interrogation. The relevant time estimate is detailed below:

01/04/2023- 01/04/2024 x 22,473 incidents x 10 minutes = 3,745 hours

Therefore, total time estimate to complete the request = 3, 745 hours

 

Question 1, 2, 3,4,5 & 6

The relevant department have advised that a response can be retrieved within the appropriate time limit, i.e. 18 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.

 

Although excess cost removed the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. 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.

Question 1:

We had a total of 1318 Police Officers and 955 Police staff employed as at the 31^st March 2024.

Question 2:

a) Yes

b) There are currently 8 staff allocated to the Rural Crime Team.

c) Staffing levels and associated budgets are based on operational requirements for each area, as are non-pay costs for things such as fuel, uniform, and stationery.

Question 3:

Torches x3

Scanners x4

Spotters x1

Drone x0

ANPR x0

4x4 x5

Question 4:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does not hold the information requested.

Question 5:

Call handlers have training on all except Raptor, within the FCC with regular training updates annually. All staff on RCT undergo an accredited wildlife Investigators course.  This is run by the National Wildlife Crime Unit.  All of these aspects are covered.  The team also undergoes various training throughout the year that is run by the Welsh Government Rural Crime Coordinator.

Heritage Crime – This is a bespoke aspect of Policing that comes under Operation Heritage Cymru.

Question 6:

RCT respond to a variety of crimes and incidents, some of these will be in an Urban setting dependant upon the nature of the incident. Also in the event of a major incident or a threat to life incident then the RCT would attend and respond in accordance of the demand of the incident.

A) Yes, Incidents of this nature will be tagged for the attention of the RCT.

B) Information is shared with Opal who presents data across the country and allows access to information from other forces.   

Question 8:

a) 0

b) 0

c) I can confirm that there is no information held by Dyfed-Powys Police due to the fact that this information is not recorded by Dyfed-Powys Police.

d) I can confirm that there is no information held by Dyfed-Powys Police due to the fact that this information is not recorded by Dyfed-Powys Police.

e) I can confirm that there is no information held by Dyfed-Powys Police due to the fact that this information is not recorded by Dyfed-Powys Police.

Please note: In searching all of our systems, no information was retrieved in relation to this question.

 

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on the 3^rd of July 2024)