Suspected female suicides 288/24
FOI Reference: 288/2024
Request:
Under the Freedom of Information Act, could you please tell me for the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 [current number as of 12th October]:
1. The number of suspected female suicides attended by police officers where domestic abuse has been a concern/previously recorded [this can be past reports linked to that specific address or individual]
2. If applicable, the number of convictions of a male perpetrator for domestic abuse offences after a woman has taken her own life.
Clarification:
Is ‘convictions’ referring to charged to court or found guilty at court?
It is found guilty at court.
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 345 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 with our current recording systems, we would have to manually review each “sudden death/suicide” record to ascertain if it contained information relevant to your request, as we do not have any applicable filters to scrutinise the data with.
Therefore, in order to ascertain if we hold any information relevant to your request, every Sudden Death/Suicide record created during the timeframe specified would require interrogation.
It has been established that there are a total of 4144 sudden death/ suicide call records recorded in the specified timeframe 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:
2020 – 1182 relevant records x 5 minutes per record = 98.5 hours
2021 – 1120 relevant records x 5 minutes per record = 93.3 hours
2022 – 1182 relevant records x 5 minutes per record = 98.5 hours
2023 (up to 12/10/2023)– 660 relevant records x 5 minutes per record = 55 hours
Please note: In relation to 2018 and 2019, the number of records that would require interrogation has not been retrieved for these years due to a recent change in force systems for recording incidents. However, similar figures would be recorded in those years as is recorded in 2020 – 2022, therefore an additional time estimate to that above would apply in order to provide a response in relation to 2018 and 2019.
Time estimated for whole request= 345.3 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.
(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 22/03/24)