Quickly exit this site by pressing the Escape key Leave this site
We use some essential cookies to make our website work. We’d like to set additional cookies so we can remember your preferences and understand how you use our site.
You can manage your preferences and cookie settings at any time by clicking on “Customise Cookies” below. For more information on how we use cookies, please see our Cookies notice.
Your cookie preferences have been saved. You can update your cookie settings at any time on the cookies page.
Your cookie preferences have been saved. You can update your cookie settings at any time on the cookies page.
Sorry, there was a technical problem. Please try again.
This site is a beta, which means it's a work in progress and we'll be adding more to it over the next few weeks. Your feedback helps us make things better, so please let us know what you think.
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 863-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 19th September 2023 as follows:
Please provide figures under the Freedom of Information Act for each year from 2018 to the most recent complete month of 2023.
Q1. The number of times the offence of an ‘out of control dog causing injury’ (008/21) has been recorded.
Q2. Please provide the data from Q1 split by victim demographics, including, but not limited to:
Q3. The data from Q1 split by outcome
Q4. If available, please also provide the data from Q1 split by dog breed.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused. 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 way of readily identifying breed type from the crime recording system. Therefore, in order to provide a response for Q4 of the request, it would be necessary to manually review each and every crime recorded under Home Office offence code 08/21 – ‘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’. The business area has carried out a scoping exercise and has advised that there are 1,231 such offences recorded between 1st January 2018 and 31st August 2023. At an estimate of 5 minutes per record to review, this would equate to in excess of 102 hours of work for this part of the request. Therefore, this would 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 acts as 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. It may be possible to provide some information at Q4 if the scope of the request were reduced to a period of 12 months or less. Please also be advised that regarding Q2d, there is a field within the Crime Recording System for relationship and this is located within the suspect person record. This should therefore show the suspect’s relationship to the victim; for example, where a suspect is the son of the victim, the relationship should show as ‘son’. However, as the field is populated manually from a drop-down menu, this is subject to human error, and it has been found that incorrect relationship information has been populated on suspect records. There is no way of determining the number of times these errors may have occurred without examining each and every record on an individual basis, which would also exceed the fees limit. However, if you require information on suspects relationship to victim, as it has been recorded on the system, which will include any errors, please revise and resubmit this part of the request.
Outside of the FoI Act, and as a gesture of goodwill, please find the responses to Q1, Q2a, Q2b, Q2c and Q3 below. This information 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: Searches were conducted for all offences, recorded between 1st January 2018 and 31st August 2023, classified under Home Office offence code 08/21 – ‘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’. The results were then broken down by year.
Year |
Number of 8/21 offences recorded |
2018 |
193 |
2019 |
178 |
2020 |
190 |
2021 |
210 |
2022 |
266 |
2023 (up to 31st August) |
194 |
Grand total |
1231 |
Q2a response: Results at Q1 were broken down by victim age. Please note that in some cases there is more than one victim per crime.
Please be advised that the request for information to be broken down by exact age and year of crime, is exempt by virtue of Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act).
Section 40(2) is an absolute class-based exemption, which does not require evidence of the harm disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test.
This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information relates to personal data of a third party or could lead to the identification of an individual, either from that information alone or combined with any other information from within the Police Service or public domain. In this case, due to extremely low numbers in some ages, disclosure of exact age by year is likely to identify an individual. Such a disclosure would breach an individual’s rights under the Data Protection Act 2018, in particular Article 5(1) of the GDPR which states that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
Instead, the information has been provided in age bands broken down by year.
Age range |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023* |
Total |
0 to 9 |
26 |
39 |
30 |
35 |
45 |
36 |
211 |
10 to 19 |
30 |
18 |
24 |
27 |
29 |
31 |
159 |
20 to 29 |
11 |
12 |
25 |
27 |
26 |
21 |
122 |
30 to 39 |
37 |
17 |
21 |
32 |
31 |
30 |
168 |
40 to 49 |
25 |
18 |
32 |
20 |
36 |
25 |
156 |
50 to 59 |
30 |
31 |
23 |
38 |
39 |
29 |
190 |
60 to 69 |
20 |
22 |
22 |
15 |
28 |
13 |
120 |
70+ |
16 |
21 |
15 |
12 |
25 |
8 |
97 |
Not recorded |
2 |
|
2 |
4 |
8 |
2 |
18 |
Grand Total |
197 |
178 |
194 |
210 |
267 |
195 |
1241 |
*Up to 31st Aug
Q2b response: Results at Q1 were broken down by victim gender. Please note that in some cases there is more than one victim per crime.
Gender |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023* |
Total |
Female |
85 |
83 |
104 |
85 |
106 |
90 |
553 |
Male |
107 |
83 |
82 |
98 |
123 |
92 |
585 |
Not recorded |
5 |
12 |
8 |
27 |
38 |
13 |
103 |
Grand Total |
197 |
178 |
194 |
210 |
267 |
195 |
1241 |
*Up to 31st Aug
Q2c response: Results at Q1 were broken down by victim ethnic appearance. Please note that in some cases there is more than one victim per crime.
Please be advised that the request for information to be broken down by year, is exempt by virtue of Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act).
Section 40(2) is an absolute class-based exemption, which does not require evidence of the harm disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test.
This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information relates to personal data of a third party or could lead to the identification of an individual, either from that information alone or combined with any other information from within the Police Service or public domain. In this case, due to extremely low numbers for some ethnicities, disclosure by year is likely to identify an individual. Such a disclosure would breach an individual’s rights under the Data Protection Act 2018, in particular Article 5(1) of the GDPR which states that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
Instead, victim ethnicity has been provided across the whole period.
Ethnicity |
Total |
Asian |
20 |
Black |
9 |
Chinese, Japanese, Or Any Other South East Asian |
1 |
White - North European |
409 |
White - South European |
4 |
Not recorded |
798 |
Grand Total |
1241* |
*Up to 31st Aug
Q3 response: Results at Q1 were broken down by crime outcome. Please note that the outcomes only show the most serious outcome for any suspect attached to a crime. If there are multiple suspects this does not take into account ‘lesser’ outcomes of any other suspect(s).
Outcome Type |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023* |
Total |
Type 1 |
6 |
16 |
17 |
11 |
20 |
5 |
75 |
Type 1A |
|
2 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
8 |
Type 3 |
1 |
|
|
|
4 |
1 |
6 |
Type 8 |
19 |
15 |
22 |
21 |
10 |
5 |
92 |
Type 10 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
2 |
Type 12 |
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
1 |
Type 14 |
44 |
17 |
19 |
38 |
37 |
28 |
183 |
Type 15 |
8 |
19 |
12 |
23 |
27 |
21 |
110 |
Type 16 |
65 |
74 |
80 |
78 |
112 |
62 |
471 |
Type 17 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
|
|
7 |
Type 18 |
38 |
18 |
33 |
32 |
46 |
33 |
200 |
Type 20 |
4 |
6 |
2 |
|
6 |
5 |
23 |
Type 21 |
5 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
|
1 |
14 |
Type 22 |
|
3 |
|
2 |
|
1 |
6 |
Not filed |
|
|
|
|
2 |
31 |
33 |
Grand Total |
193 |
178 |
190 |
210 |
266 |
194 |
1231 |
*Up to 31st Aug
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from several data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system and may differ from previous data disclosed for similar requests. Therefore, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data.
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