FOI 648/25
REQUEST
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from your police force:
1a) How many times have you responded to a malicious threat or intruder at a school where they have had to do a full lockdown in the years (from January-January): 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
b) Can you give a breakdown to the nature of the incident in reference to question 1a
2a) How many people aged 0 to 16-years-old have been found in possession of a knife or bladed articles in school and have been arrested for the following years (from January-January): 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
b) Can you give a break down by age and sex in reference to question 2a
3a) How many people aged 0 to 16-years-old have been charged for possession of a knife or bladed article at a school for the following years (from January-January): 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
b) Can you give a break down by age and sex in reference to question 3a
4a) How many violent assaults have you attended in schools for the following years(from January-January): 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
b) Can you give a break down by age and sex in reference to question 4a
Please provide the information in an electronic format or Excel spreadsheet.
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.
Unfortunately, there is no specific category or method by which we can readily retrieve information from our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) to accurately answer question 1 of your request.
Therefore, a search has been conducted for all crimes where ‘Preparatory/First/Primary/Infant/Junior/Middle School’ or ‘Secondary/High School’ is selected as the ‘Tertiary Address Description’ between 1st January 2020 and 9th May 2025 (the date of your request).
This search retrieved 7,381 results.
We estimate that it would take approximately 3 – 5 minutes to individually interrogate each occurrence on Niche RMS in order to ascertain whether they related to a malicious threat or intruder at a school which resulted in a full lockdown at the school.
We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 369 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 remove question 1, we may be able to assist with the rest of your request.