Domestic abuse 722/2025

FOI Reference: 722/2025

Request:

I am writing under the Freedom of Information act to request data held on crimes investigated by your force which were flagged as Domestic Abuse (DA) related, their recorded outcome, and if a named suspect’s occupation is ‘police officer’ or related role*, from 1 January 2021 to 30 April 2025.

Specifically, I request the following information, broken down by month and outcome. Please break down outcomes by HOCR type i.e. Type 1 Charged/Summonsed, Type 2 Youth Caution, etc.

If for whatever reason your systems do not allow the retrieval of this data for the whole period, or doing so would exceed cost limitations, please limit your response to a reasonable time frame by starting with a more recent month.

If summarising totals by month is considered too detailed due to small numbers, please break down by year or just the overall total before considering suppressing figures.

Please send the response in an Excel spreadsheet.

N.b. this request refers to crime investigations, not professional standards/misconduct.

* My understanding is that occupation recording is not standardised, therefore I request that you include job titles like ‘police officer’ / ‘serving officer’ / ‘special constable’ / specific job titles if listed i.e. ‘police constable’ or ‘police sergeant’ – but do not include civilian titles like ‘police staff’ or PCSO. I also understand that occupation may not always be recorded (see Q3).

Q1) All recorded crime investigations flagged as DA, total broken down by month and outcome type, 2021 to end of April 2025. Grouped by date investigation was opened.

Q2) Similarly, but for only those investigations where a named suspect has a recorded occupation of police officer* (see definition above), all recorded crime investigations flagged as DA, total broken down by month and outcome type, 2021 to end of April 2025. Grouped by date investigation was opened.

 Q3) If possible and not exceeding cost limitations please also indicate, of the total number of investigations in Q1, …

• The number which have at least one named suspect.
• The proportion of linked suspects who have any occupation recorded.

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 the whole 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 2,193 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @ https://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.

The Dyfed-Powys Police crime recording systems do not have a mandatory field where the occupation of a suspect must be recorded. In order to determine how many suspects involved in domestic abuse cases were police officers (or similar roles), we would be required to manually review the documents linked to each occurrence to see if this is something that has been recorded. Within the time frame, there are over 26,319 occurrences that would need to be reviewed. It is worth noting that if we were able to review each occurrence within the time frame, there may be incidents where the suspects occupation has not been recorded and therefore the data would not be reliable.

The relevant time estimate is detailed below:

1 January 2021 to 30 April 2025 – 26,319 records x 5 minutes per record = 2,193 hours

Total time estimate to complete whole request = 2,193 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.                                            

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 07/11/2025)