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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 1100-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 4th December 2023 as follows:
Over the last four years, please could you provide me with:
Q1. The number of people who have been arrested and/or charged on suspicion of driving a vehicle having inhaled nitrous oxide.
Q2. The number of nitrous oxide cannisters seized by police from vehicles.
Q3. The number of road traffic incidents reported to police in which nitrous oxide has/is suspected to have been involved/inhaled by the driver.
Q4. Of these road traffic incidents, the number which have involved injury or death.
Please provide the information in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not available in a readily retrievable format. With regard to Q1, this is not an offence in its own right and would fall under driving under the influence of drugs or driving unfit through drink/drugs. In order to determine a response to this part of the request, it would be necessary to manually examine each and every record relating to these offences to confirm if the driver was under the influence of nitrous oxide. This would involve a review of thousands of records and would take an inordinate amount of time. Further, with regard to Q3 and Q4, it would be necessary to manually review each and every road traffic collision report in order to determine whether nitrous oxide is mentioned. On average there are around 1000 collision reports recorded annually, and at an estimate of 3 minutes per record to review, this would equate to approximately 200 hours of work for the specified period. Therefore, the work involved in locating, retrieving, and recording the information requested at Q1, or at Q2/Q3, exceeds the cost threshold (£450), which equates to 18 hours work at a standard rate of £25 per hour, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for these parts of the request, and, if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce these parts of the request into one which could be managed within the fees limit on this occasion. Regarding Q2, it may be possible to provide some information on the number of nitrous oxide cannisters entered on to the seized property management system, should you wish to revise and resubmit your request, however, in order to determine the number that had been seized from a vehicle, a manual review of all records would be required, and therefore this element of the request could still exceed the appropriate fees limit.
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 Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB