FOI 596-2025 / June 2025 / Dogs
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 596-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 3rd June 2025 as follows:
The number of reported incidents relating to dogs being left in a hot vehicle AND/OR The number of animal cruelty incidents relating to dogs being left in a hot vehicle
The data should cover as much of the years 2014-2025 as possible within allowed budget of data collection broken down by month. Within this please include geographic information as well as the type of vehicle.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is held in a readily retrievable format. There is no ‘category type’, ‘tag’ or ‘disposal code’ within the Command & Control System to assist with identifying incidents relating to concerns about dogs (or animals in general) left in hot vehicles. I can advise that the business area conducted a search of the Command & Control System for all incident logs, recorded between 1st January 2020 and 31st December 2024, containing the keyword ‘Dog’, and where the text also contained any of the following words: ‘Heat’, ‘Hot’, ‘Temperature’, ‘Vehicle’, ‘Car’, or ‘Warm’. This search returned 1,245 incident logs, and, in order to determine relevance and then the further detail requested, it would be necessary to manually review each log on an individual basis. At a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per incident this would equate to 104 hours of work. However, since you request was for a further 6 years of information, the time would be considerably greater. Therefore, searches would take an inordinate amount of time and greatly 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 acts as a Refusal Notice 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, due to the volume of records that would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce the request into one that could be managed 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