FOI 747/25

REQUEST

- 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.

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.

 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.

Unfortunately, there is no specific occurrence type relating to reports of dogs being left in hot vehicles, these sorts of reports would be recorded under the occurrence type ‘PS32 Animals/wildlife’. A search on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) brought back 14,704 occurrences recorded under this occurrence type during the requested time frame.

We estimate it will take approximately 1-2 minutes to interrogate each occurrence to establish if they relate to reports of dogs being left in vehicles on hot days. We therefore estimate it would take an excess of 368 hours.

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 data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.