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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 554-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 2nd June as follows:
Q1. How many offences and/or tickets were recorded in the years 2021 and 2022 for number plate (vehicle registration marks) mis-space and/or registrations which do not conform to legality?
Q2. How many reports for the years 2021 and 2022 were recorded for the cloning of vehicle registration marks?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that some of the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no specific offence or marker to identify where a report refers to vehicle cloning. The business area has carried out a scoping exercise by searching the Command-and-Control system for all incident reports mentioning the words ‘clone’ or ‘plate’ in the body of the text, which has identified 4,637 reports for 2021. In order to determine which of these reports relate to vehicle cloning, it would be necessary to manually review each and every incident report. The business area has advised that, at 3 minutes per incident to review, this would equate to over 231 hours of work for 2021 alone. This would therefore exceed 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. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for this part 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 in relation to your request; however, on this occasion, due to the number of incidents which would have to be individually reviewed to determine if they related to vehicle cloning, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request to allow the retrieval of this information within the fees limit.
As a gesture of goodwill, please see below a breakdown representing the number of fixed penalty notices, issued in 2021 and 2022, which were later cancelled due to the reason of ‘cloned VRM’.
Closed as 'Cloned' * |
|
Year |
Total |
2021 |
139 |
2022 |
257 |
Grand Total |
396 |
* The above information refers to all fixed penalty notices issued in 2021 or 2022, which were later cancelled for the reason ‘Cloned’ VRM.
In addition, a response to Q1 has also been provided below. This was obtained before it was realised that not all of the requested information could be retrieved in full within the fees limit, and this should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
Q1 response: Please be advised that the below figures relate to the number of offences.
2021 |
68 |
Drive a vehicle when the registration mark fails to conform with regulations |
43 |
Drive vehicle / vehicle and trailer no rear registration plate - registered after 30/09/38 |
11 |
Drive vehicle no front registration plate - registered after 30/09/38 |
14 |
2022 |
84 |
Drive a vehicle when the registration mark fails to conform with regulations |
59 |
Drive vehicle / vehicle and trailer no rear registration plate - registered after 30/09/38 |
7 |
Drive vehicle no front registration plate - registered after 30/09/38 |
18 |
Grand Total |
152 |
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