FOI 411-2025 / Apr 2025 / Claire’s Law
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 411-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 7th April 2025 as follows:
This is a request made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (also known as Clare's Law).
Please provide the following data from 2014 up until the most current date available, broken down by calendar year.
If data as early as 2014 is not available, please provide it from the first available date onwards.
In the event that you decide answering me in full would exceed the cost limit, please answer what you can, prioritising my requests in the order I have asked them. Please provide annual totals of:
Q1. All applications under the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme
Q2. "Right to know" applications under the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme
Q3. The number of disclosures made after a "right to know" application
Q4. "Right to ask" applications under the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme
Q5. The number of disclosures made after a right to ask application
Q6. The number of disclosures made within 28 days of a "Right to ask" application
Q7. The number of disclosures made after 28 days of a "Right to ask" application
Q8. The longest time it took for a "right to ask" disclosure to be provided
If possible, please could I have the information requested in CSV or other machine-readable format.
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 response for Warwickshire Police set out below.
The numerical data presented below is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data
Q1, Q2 and Q4 response:
|
DVDS |
2018* |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025** |
Total |
|
DVDS - Right to Ask |
83 |
91 |
119 |
147 |
228 |
277 |
532 |
356 |
1833 |
|
DVDS - Right to Know |
11 |
53 |
58 |
47 |
41 |
52 |
148 |
75 |
485 |
|
DVDS*** |
55 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
55 |
|
Grand Total |
149 |
144 |
177 |
194 |
269 |
329 |
680 |
431 |
2373 |
* Due to changes in systems, it is not possible to retrieve annual information for statistical purposes prior to 1st January 2018
**Up to 31st May 2025
***Not recorded as Right to Know or Right to Ask, recorded as DVDS only.
Q3 and Q5 response:
|
DVDS – Right to Know |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
Total |
|
DVDS DISCLOSURE |
3 |
31 |
40 |
19 |
21 |
32 |
76 |
31 |
253 |
|
DVDS – Right to Ask |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
Total |
|
DVDS DISCLOSURE |
11 |
33 |
46 |
76 |
60 |
72 |
181 |
131 |
610 |
|
DVDS |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
2025 |
Total |
|
DVDS DISCLOSURE |
15 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
15 |
Q6, Q7 and Q8 response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. In order to determine the information requested in Q6, Q7 and Q8, it would be necessary to individually review each and every DVDS application / record on an individual basis. I can advise that, due to changes in systems, it is not possible to retrieve annual information prior to 2018 for statistical purposes; therefore, searches were conducted for all DVDS, recorded within the period 1st January 2018 and 31st May 2025. This produced a total of 2373 records and at an estimate of 5 minutes per record to review, this would equate to in excess of 197 hours of work. Therefore, the work involved in locating and retrieving the requested information for Q6, Q7 and Q8 will exceed the cost threshold (£450), which equates to 18 hours work at a standard rate of £25 per hour, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for these parts of the 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, due to the volume of records that would need to be manually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to revise these parts of the request into ones that could be provided within the fees limit.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible; however, the data is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, 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