FOI 136-2024 / Jan 2024 / Immigration
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 136-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 31/01/2024 as follows:
Please may you provide me with:
1. The total number of victims of crimes reported to your police force, whose details have been referred to the Home Office for immigration enforcement, broken down by financial year, since 2010.
2. The total number of witnesses of crimes reported to your police force, whose details have been referred to the Home Office for immigration enforcement, broken down by financial year, since 2010.
Response:
Please be advised that the information requested is not held centrally and is therefore not available in a readily retrievable format. In order to determine whether the force have ever referred any victims or witnesses of crimes to the Home Office for immigration status, it would be necessary to manually review each and every crime reported to Warwickshire Police. It is incalculable how many of these crimes would need to be examined before we were able to determine a yes or no answer. As an indication of the work involved it is estimated that it would take at least 5 minutes to examine the documentation relevant to each investigation. Therefore, even reviewing the first 220 crimes would take over 18 hours of work, which is the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e., the cost of confirming or denying whether the requested information is held 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 under section 12(2) for this 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, for the reasons set out above, I am unable to suggest revisions which would enable the information to be retrieved 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 Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB