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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 745-2021
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 3rd September 2021 as follows:
How many deaths investigated by your police force have been classified as unexplained?
Please give an annual breakdown for every year from 2010 to 2020. If this is not possible, please do this for the years 2015 to 2020. Please also include details of the cases if possible
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response:
Please be advised that the information requested is not centrally recorded and, therefore, is not held in a readily retrievable format.
Warwickshire Police do not finalise occurrences as ‘unexplained death’, therefore we would need to manually review all relevant crimes and non-crime investigations to establish whether the cause of death was explained or not. Considering just non-crime unexplained/Sudden Death occurrences alone, there were 2,959 recorded within the requested period. These include unexpected deaths with natural causes, accidents, and sudden deaths such as suicides.
There is no way of automatically filtering this data to retrieve information specifically in relation to deaths classified as unexplained. Therefore these records would need to be manually reviewed
At a minimum of 3 minutes per record, this would take over 147 hours of work.
This would be 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.
In accordance with s12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for your request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request; however, due to the amount of records that would need to be reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be provided within the fees limit.
Please note this information may be held by the Coroner’s Office. Coroner's Offices are not formally subject to the Freedom of Information Act and are, therefore, not legally obliged to respond to Freedom of Information requests.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB