FOI 447-2025 / Apr 2025 / Foraging
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 447-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 15th April 2025 as follows:
I would like to submit a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) regarding foraging or picking of plants. Please provide the relevant information for the period between 1 April 2022 and the most recent date for which data is available.
Please could you provide the following:
The number of reports made to your force about foraging or picking of plants.
Please could you provide the following breakdown:
A yearly breakdown of the number of reports made about foraging or picking of plants.
The approximate location (for example: name of the park or road) at which the foraging or picking of plants allegedly took place.
Whether the report of foraging or picking of plants led to a charge.
The names of the offences under which these charges were made.
The number of these charges which proceeded to conviction.
If you need to carry out a key terms search to locate these records, please include the terms “foraged”, “foraging”, “wild food”, “forager”, “wild ingredients”. If you would document these cases in another way, please include these results as per the spirit of my request.
Please provide the response in an Excel spreadsheet.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: A search of the Command-and-Control system was conducted for all incident logs recorded in the specified period, containing any of the following keywords: ‘foraged’, ‘foraging’, ‘wild food’, ‘forager’, and ‘wild ingredients’. The results were individually reviewed for relevance, and I can confirm that there were no reports relating to the foraging or picking of plants, and therefore our response to your request is no information held.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible. However, it is important to note that the data is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, and 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