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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 25-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 7th January 2025, and clarification received on 9th January 2025 as follows:
On 9th January we contacted you as follows:
Please be advised that there is no specific offence of ‘dog attack’. Notifiable Home Office offence code ‘8/21 – ‘Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog’, considers that a dog shall be regarded as dangerously out of control on any occasion on which there are grounds for reasonable apprehension that it will injure any person or assistance dog, whether or not it actually does so.
Further, where such an offence is recorded, there is no way of readily identifying from the crime recording system, the breed of dog involved. In order to determine whether an ‘attack’ took place and whether the breed of dog is mentioned, it would be necessary to examine each and every 008/21 investigation on an individual basis, including any associated documents.
I have included a link to a previous disclosure in relation to numbers of 008/71 offences which sets out the breakdown per month for 2003 and to the end of August 2024:
You will see from this that there are over 600 offences which would need to be reviewed on an individual basis and, even at a conservative estimate of 3 minutes per record , 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 considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
We could provide the further breakdown of 008/21 offences for the period September to December should you require (the remaining period is contained within the link).
Or should you wish to reduce your request to a much lesser time period then it may be possible to conduct searches for attacks and breed; however, please be mindful that this would need to be a period of months rather than years.
Please advise how you wish to proceed.
On 9th January you provided the following:
Thank you for coming back to me and providing me with the previously shared data, that was exactly what I was looking for.
Yes, if it would be possible to get the remaining 2024 for September to December, that would fit perfectly with all other data received from other police forces.
On 9th of January we contacted you further as follows:
Thank you very much for your clarification. We have interpreted this to be seeking the following:
Please provide a monthly breakdown of offences 8/21 – ‘Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog’ for the period September 2024 to December 2024.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response:
008/21 Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog |
||
Year |
Month |
Total |
2024 |
September |
29 |
October |
35 |
|
November |
18 |
|
December |
34 |
|
Grand Total |
116 |
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