Armed Police response times 487/2024

FOI Reference: 487/2024

Request:

1 (a) For 12 months to the end of April 2024, please outline your force's average response time for a firearms unit / armed response unit, where an emergency call demands an armed police response.

- Please break this data / timings down by each post code area your force serves, eg. SW1, L27, EH11 ...

(b) Additionally, please provide this information for 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23.

(c) What are your force's target times for armed police responses to these post code locations?

2 (a) In the year to April 2024, how many incidents required an armed police response from your force?

(b) Additionally, please provide this information for 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23

 

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 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 27,409 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 relation to your request is not held in an easily retrievable format.

Questions 1a, 1b, 2a & 2b:

In order to establish the requested information would require each incident record whereby a firearms unit may have been deployed to be individually interrogated. This would include various call categories as a firearms unit may be deployed to numerous types of calls. It has been established that there are a total of 164,456 incidents that would require interrogation and it has been estimated it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to review a single record. A breakdown of the time estimate is detailed below:

a) -

May 2023 - April 2024: 35,029 incidents x 10 minutes per incident = 5839 hours

b) -

May 2022 - April 2023: 34,495 incidents x 10 minutes per incident = 5749 hours

May 2021 - April 2022: 34, 418 incidents x 10 minutes per incident = 5736 hours

May 2020 - April 2021: 30, 729 incidents x 10 minutes per incident = 5121 hours

May 2019 - April 2020: 29, 785 incidents x 10 minutes per incident = 4964 hours

Total time to complete task = 27,409 hours

 

Question 1c:

The relevant department have advised that a response can be provided 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 the Freedom of Information Unit.

Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.

 

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(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 24.06.2024)