FOI 954/25

Request

1. How many incidents of anti-social behaviour were reported to your force in the past four full calendar years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021?
2. How many of those reports led to a police officer attending the scene of the incident (broken down by calendar year for the same number of years)?

Response

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

In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:  

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

A search has been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) for all occurrences recorded using the following Occurrence Types, ‘ASB Personal’, ‘ASB Nuisance’ and ‘ASB Environmental’ reported between the dates specified. This search retrieved 40961 occurrences for 2021 alone.

We estimate that it would take approximately two - three minutes to interrogate each occurrence to identify whether an officer attended the scene.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 18 hours for the one year alone.  

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. If you were to remove question two, then we may be able to assist with your request.