Violence in schools 641/2024
FOI Reference: 641/2024
Request:
- The number of reports to your police force involving a child (16 and under) threatening a member of staff with an offensive weapon on school premises in the following years:
2022/23
2023/24
- The number of reports to your police force where a child (16 and under) is in possession of an offensive weapon on school premises in the following years:
2022/23
2023/24
- The number of reports involving a child (16 and under) physically assaulting a member of staff on school premises in the following years:
2022/23
2023/24
- If possible please provide a breakdown to the total in Q3 by type of assault. How many were common assault, actual bodily harm, or grievous bodily harm in the following years:
Common Assault:
2022/23
2023/24
Actual bodily Harm:
2022/23
2023/24
Grievous bodily harm:
2022/23
2023/24
- The number of times a school in your area has reported enforcing a 'lockdown' measure due to threat towards staff and pupils in the following years:
2022/23
2023/24
- How many of those reports in Q5 involved an intruder for the following years:
2022/23
2023/24
Clarification Q:
- When you state reports, are you referring to 999/101 calls received?
- Are you referring to incidents or crimes? Please note an incident is different from a crime. An incident is a record of contact made to a police force by an individual/member of public (usually via a 999 or 101 call) and a crime is where the threshold has been met for the police force to deem that a criminal offence has occurred as defined by law.
- Are you requesting the in formation in Financial years?
Clarification A:
By reports I mean all calls to police whether that be via 999 or 101.
I'm referring to the total number of incidents reported.
Yes I am asking in financial years.
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 3031 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244
The Freedom of Information department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. In light of this and in order to accurately obtain the information relative to your request for the time frame stipulated would involve Dyfed Powys Police accessing and reviewing all assault and weapon crimes, each record would have to be manually reviewed to ascertain if the incident occurred on school premises.
It has been established that there are a total of 18181 records that cover the period of your request. It has also been established that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of your request (as outlined above). The process outlined results in the below time estimate.
|
Q1 |
No. of incidents |
Time in hours |
|
Assaults 01/09/22-31/07/23 |
4007 |
668 |
|
Weapons 01/09/22-31/07/23 |
735 |
123 |
|
Assaults 01/09/23-10/07/24 |
3623 |
604 |
|
Weapons 01/09/23-10/07/24 |
919 |
153 |
|
Total |
9284 |
1548 |
|
Q2 |
|
|
|
Weapons 01/09/22-31/07/23 |
735 |
123 |
|
Weapons 01/09/23-10/07/24 |
919 |
153 |
|
Total |
1654 |
276 |
|
Q3 |
|
|
|
Assaults 01/09/22-31/07/23 |
4007 |
668 |
|
Assaults 01/09/23-10/07/24 |
3623 |
604 |
|
Total |
7630 |
1272 |
|
Q4 |
see Q3 |
see Q3 |
|
Q5 |
see Q1 + |
see Q1 + |
|
Safety&Bomb 01/09/22-31/07/23 |
3914 |
652.5 |
|
Safety&Bomb 01/09/23-10/07/24 |
4983 |
830.5 |
|
Total |
8897 |
1483 |
|
Q6 |
see Q5 |
see Q5 |
|
Overall Total |
18181 |
3031 |
Time estimate to complete task = 3031 hours
In accordance therefore 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 the Freedom of Information Unit. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the public authorities 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 19/07/2024)