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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 905-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 3rd October 2023 as follows:
Q1. Dog attacks by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.
Q2. Dog seizures by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.
Q3. Reports/calls of dangerous dogs from the public that resulted in seizure / action by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.
Q4. Reports/calls of dangerous dogs from the public that did not result in seizure / action by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.
Q5. Confirmation that trained dog handlers attended any call out to dogs. If not, the reasons as to why and the result of the call out.
Q6. The number of trained dog handlers in your force.
I would like you to provide this information in the following format:
Table or bullet point format.
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 of ‘dog attack’, and no specific field or marker within the crime recording system to easily identify whether a dog was seized, the breed type, or if a dog handler attended, in relation to a dangerous dog offence. Between 2019 and 2022, the force utilised a bespoke system to record dog seizures and destructions, however, due to changes in 2022, this system, and the information recorded on it, is no longer accessible. In order to provide assistance, the business area has carried out a search for the number of offences classified under notifiable Home Office offence code ‘8/21 – ‘Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog’, for the period 1st January 2018* and 31st August 2023. Under this offence, a dog shall be regarded as dangerously out of control on any occasion on which there are grounds for reasonable apprehension that it will injure any person or assistance dog, whether or not it actually does so. This search identified 1,232 crimes, as broken down below.
Year |
Number of 8/21 offences |
2018 |
193 |
2019 |
178 |
2020 |
190 |
2021 |
210 |
2022 |
266 |
2023 (up to end Aug) |
195 |
Grand total |
1232 |
*Please note that crime information is only available from October 2017 onwards.
In order to determine responses for Q1 to Q5 of the request, it would be necessary to manually review each and every investigation report and associated documentation. At an estimate of at least 5 minutes per record to review, this would equate to more than 102 hours of work and 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 refining your request; however, as Q1 to Q5 require all records to be manually reviewed for any single element, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be provided within the fees limit. I can advise that it may be possible to provide a response to Q6, should you wish to submit a new request, however, please note that we will require a specific date on which we can provide the count, for example, the number of trained dog handlers in your force as of 1st October 2023, or ‘as of the date of the request’.
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