FOI 578-2024 / June 2024 / Hit and run
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 578-2024
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 18th June 2024 as follows:
1.How many hit and run incidents has the force recorded in the last three years [between April 6- April 5 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/23]?
1a) Of those, how many resulted in casualties and what was the severity of the casualty?
1b) Of those, how many incidents where the driver was uninsured?
1c) Of those, how many resulted in a prosecution or other police course of action? Can you specify which?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that not all of the requested information is centrally recorded and therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. With regard to Q1b, in order to determine the number of incidents where the driver was uninsured at the time, it would be necessary to check systems in relation to each and every collision. The business area has advised that there are 260 records which fall within the scope of your request and, at approximately 5 minutes per record, such searches would equate to in excess of 21 hrs. 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 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 these parts 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; however, due to the volume of records which would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit as it stands, unless you were to reduce your request to one or two years.
I can advise that the information that we would be able to provide in relation to the requested time period is the number of vehicles involved in a hit and run by year as follows:
- Hit and run - this is a straightforward hit and run one vehicle hits another and does not stop.
- Non-stop vehicle not hit – when, for example, two cars are going in the opposite direction V1 swerves over to the other side of the road, V2 also swerves to avoid V1, V2 then ends up having a collision but V1 does not stop and is not hit.
We may also be able to provide the number of casualties and severity.
Please note that prosecution data falls within the remit of His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service and you may wish to contact them in this regard. With regard to any other outcome, as these are non-stops, details will not be known in all cases; however, for those that are known it would be necessary to manually check records to ascertain what those outcomes were, and this would be dependent upon numbers returned as to whether this could be carried out 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