FOI 696/25
REQUEST
- How many reports to SWP were made in the period Jan2024-Jan2025, relating to a female perpetrator of domestic abuse (including accusation/allegation of coercive control).
- How many reports were made, of violence towards a partner by a female perpetrator? (if you have stats for male or female partner ie: lesbian or hetero couple, that would be informative too).
- Of those reported, how many resulted in: (a) no further action; (b) formal caution (c) progression to trial
- What percentage of male perpetrators once reported, progress to prosecution including those accepting formal caution.
RESPONSE
Questions 2 & 3
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.
At South Wales Police we monitor and collate statistical data on crimes, incidents and other data relevant to our daily business. The predominant purpose of this is to identifying pattern and trends, so resource allocation and policies can be managed to ensure public safety.
The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query. Therefore, we have consulted with our Safeguarding and Public Protection Department who confirm that there were 810 occurrences relating to female perpetrators of violence towards victims of all ages and all relationships, including partners, mothers, siblings, acquaintances, etc. recorded between 1st January 2024 to 31st December 2024.
In order to accurately answer your request, we would be required to individually interrogate each occurrence on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) in order to establish if the victim was a partner.
We estimate that this would take approximately 3 minutes to individually interrogate each occurrence.
We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 40 hours to answer this part of 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. If you were to resubmit your request asking for question 1 only, we may be able to assist.
In regards to question 4 which asks for prosecutions, this information is held by the courts and you may wish to resubmit this part of your request to them.
For ease, I have provided the below link:
Freedom of Information | The Crown Prosecution Service