FOI 1009/25

Request

Can you please disclose the following information: 

-The number of IOPC referrals for serious injuries involving a) police pursuits and b)emergency responses – can you please provide a year-on-year breakdown for the last ten years to the present day for both sets of data 

-The number of IOPC referrals for serious injuries involving a) police pursuits and b)emergency responses involving your police force in the last five years. 

-The number of prosecutions against officers from your force over road traffic accidents that resulted in death or serious injury – providing a year-on-year breakdown for the last ten years 

-The number of driving offence convictions  in cases referred to the IOPC – providing a year-on-year breakdown and the charge - for the last ten years. 

Response

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.    

Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: 

(a) states that fact,

(b) specifies the exemption in question and

(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

In relation to your particular request, the following exemption applies:

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.                                                                                                         

We have consulted with our Professional Standards Department (PSD) who have provided the below information.

The PSD system logs referrals and categories; however, the field for ‘Circumstance’ has been inconsistently used.

There were 791 ‘Death or serious injury’ referrals recorded within the requested time-period. There are a number of which have no entries in the ‘Circumstance’ field and a number which are inconsistently used.

We estimate that it would take approximately 5 minutes to individually interrogate each IOPC referral and read through each one in order to retrieve the requested information.

We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 65 hours to answer your request.

It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above 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.

In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.

If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.

Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. Unfortunately, due to the way in which the data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.