Ill treatment offences 638/2022

FOI Reference: 638/2022

Request:

In relation to the years - April 2020-March 2021 and April 2021- March 2022. I require the following information, 

The number of ill treatment or wilful neglect offences recorded by Dyfed-Powys Police involving victims in age categories 65-74 and 75+

A breakdown of the gender of the victims identified above.

A breakdown of the relationship of victim to principal suspect for each victim identified above. 

Clarification sought:

Are you referring to incidents or crimes?

Clarification received:

Can you please supply the notifiable offences and notifiable reported incidents.

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 your 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 56.84 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm

The Freedom of Information Unit have been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format as the act of ill treatment and/or wilful neglect would fall under the crime of assault with injury. Therefore, in order to establish what information, if any, is held in relation to your request would require the individual interrogation of all assault with injury crimes over the time frame specified whereby the victims age has been recorded as 65 and over to identify if the crime in question relates to ill treatment and/or wilful neglect. It has been established that for the period as specified within the request (i.e. 20/21 – 21/22) there are a total 341 assault with injury crimes that would need to be reviewed and it has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to research a single crime for relevance to your request as outlined above, resulting in the following broken down time estimate.

20/21 = 181 crimes @ 10 minutes per incident = 30.17 hours

21/22 = 160 crimes @ 10 minutes per incident = 26.67 hours

Total of 56.84 hours to complete task

Please note: The Freedom of Information Unit has been advised that to answer your request in terms of incidents would result in and additional time estimate that would also exceed 18 hour time limit. This time estimate has not been outlined due to the fact that the request has already exceeded the 18 hour time limit.

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, however with due regard to the time estimate provided above it is unlikely that refining your request will fall under the 18 hours as the same method and format will have to be undertaken. 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.

                                                                                                           

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 21/09/22)