FOI 368-2025 / Mar 2025 / Dog attacks
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 368-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 26th March 2025 as follows:
We seem to be hearing and seeing several reports of dog-on-dog attacks.
Could I have any figures or information that you have about the number of dog attacks that you have recorded for our ward in the last year please?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. Where an incident has been reported relating solely to a dog injuring another dog, the threshold to record a crime is not always met. Therefore, in order to determine the number of times we have received a call or online report detailing a dog attacking another dog, a search would firstly be required to locate all incident logs recorded in the specified period with the call type of ‘Animal’ and then each resulting log would have to be individually reviewed to determine if it related to a report of a dog-on-dog attack. Following a scoping exercise of the Command-and-Control system it was determined that there were over 1,700 incident logs recorded between 1st January and 31st December 2024 with the call type ‘Animal’. At a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per log to review, this would equate to in excess of 141 hours of work and would therefore 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.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is 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 reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be provided within the fees limit.
I can however advise that, whilst there is no specific offence entitled ‘dog attack’, notifiable Home Office offence code ‘8/21 relates to the crime of ‘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’. This offence 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. Therefore, it may be possible to provide some information using this offence classification, should you wish to revise and resubmit your request.
In addition, you may wish to review our response to the below FOI request, which relates to 08/21 crime figures for the period 1st February 2024 to 31st January 2025:
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