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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 837-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 11th September 2023 as follows:
Last financial year
Q1. How many dog attacks were reported?
Q2. How many people were injured?
Q3. What were the top 5 breeds involved by number?
Q4. How many dogs were euthanised?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that 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 fields, flags or markers within the crime recording system to easily identify when an injury has been sustained, the breed type or whether the animal was euthanised in relation to a dangerous dog offence. In order to provide assistance, the business area has carried out a search for all offences, recorded between financial year 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023, classified under Home Office crime recording 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’. 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 266 offences. In order to determine a response to this 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, it would equate to more than 22 hours of work to locate the requested information. 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 refining your request; however, as it requires the records to be manually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be provided within the 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