FOI 563/25

REQUEST

I am looking for any of the following information please:

- The number of attacks involving glass that have happened over the past 5 years

- The severity of the attack and the injuries sustained

- The type of glass that's used (i.e, drinking glass, glass bottles)

- What percentage of the glass attacks have involved alcohol (i.e, the person who threw the glass/glass bottle was drunk)

- What percentage of those who attacked somebody with glass were caught and prosecuted.

- Number/percentage of investigated cases that included forensic submissions

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 under the ONS group: Violence with Injury within the requested time frame. This search retrieved 9,620 results for the year 2020 alone.

We estimate that this would take 2 to 3 minutes to interrogate each occurrence to supply the specific information that you require.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 2,004 hours to retrieve the information that you require for a 5 year period.

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.