FOI 201-2024 / Feb 2024 / Sexual assaults
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: FOI-201-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 14th February 2024 as follows:
- How many sexual assaults and rapes against people aged over 18 have been reported which are alleged to have taken place at public toilets in your jurisdiction in the last 10 years?
- How many sexual assaults and rapes against people aged under 18 have been reported which are alleged to have taken place at public toilets in your jurisdiction in the last 10 years?
- How many cases had an outcome of charge/summons?
- If possible, please provide yearly data and comment on measures you are taking to address the issue.
- If 10 years of data is not available, please provide data from the earliest month you can trace to the most recent month.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience that this may have caused you. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please note that, due to changes in systems, it is not possible to retrieve information prior to October 2017 in a reportable format; therefore, searches were undertaken for all offences, recorded since that time, where the location type is ‘public toilet’.
I can advise that this search did not return any records relevant to your request. However, it must be taken into account that the ‘location type’ field is not mandatory, and so may not always completed. Therefore, in the event that relevant information is held, but the location type field has not been completed, then any such records would not have been returned within the searches. For this reason the information should be treated with caution.
In order to fully determine whether any information is held relevant to your request, and then to provide an accurate response, it would be necessary to review each and every sexual assault and rape offence, recorded since October 2017, on an individual basis. Given the number of such offences recorded annually by the force, searches would take an inordinate amount of time and would undoubtedly 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 up to 18 hours of work on one 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