FOI 394-2024 / Apr 2024 / Domestic Violence
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 394-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 9th April 2024 as follows:
I would like to receive information on the following questions for your local authority area, spanning the past 5 years up to the latest available data.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, I wish to request the following information:
- How many incidents of domestic violence were reported by the public and recorded during the requested timeframes?
- Of those reported, how many cases of domestic violence were followed up by a police officer?
- What were the police officer’s response times for each domestic violence incident/report/call?
- How many of these cases resulted in a prosecution?
- Of the reported domestic abuse cases, how many were given a domestic violence protection order?
In your response, please include the following information (where available):
- The nature of the abuse (e.g. psychological, physical, sexual, emotional)
- The gender of the victims
- The gender of the offenders
- The ethnic background of the victims
- The age of the victims
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that not all of the information requested is available in a readily retrievable format. The Command and Control System and the Crime recording system are not linked; therefore, in order to determine the number of reports in Q1 which resulted in a charge or a DVPO, it would be necessary to review each and every one on an individual basis to locate the resulting crime reference. Once this had been completed each one would then need to be individually reviewed on the Crime Recording system.
This would involve reviewing thousands of records on an individual basis, which would exceed 18 hours of work and therefore is above 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.
In accordance with 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 S12 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, due to the number of records which would need to be examined, I am unable to suggest a way to revise this element of your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit. However, I can advise that it may be possible to conduct searches within the fees limit for the following:
Q1 to Q3 for incidents on the Command and Control System. However, please note that the subsequent detail requested at point 1 to 5 could not be undertaken within the fees limit as this is not easily extractable and would require scrutinising every incident on an individual basis.
Q4 as a standalone set of information based on the number of crimes with a Domestic Abuse included classification which resulted in a charge. It may also be possible to provide a breakdown for the subsequent detail requested at point 2 to 5 in relation to gender, ethnicity and age. However, it is likely that the information requested at point 1 in relation to the nature of the abuse would again exceed the fees limit as it would require scrutinising every crime on an individual basis.
Q5 as a standalone set of information based on the number of DVPOs and DVPNs in the periods.
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