FOI 456/25

REQUEST

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information relating to the offence of driving without proper control of the vehicle (commonly associated with offence code CD10).

Please provide data for the last three calendar years: 2022, 2023 and 2024, with a monthly breakdown where possible.

Specifically, I would like to request the following:

Q1. The total number of cautions issued under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.

Q2. The total number of fixed penalties issued under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.

Q3. The total number of prosecutions initiated under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.

Q4. A full list or breakdown of all offences recorded under CD10 during this period.

Q5. Where available, any accompanying officer notes, incident descriptors, or free-text fields associated with CD10 offences.

Q6. If possible, please indicate whether any of the CD10 offences were related to driving with pets in the vehicle (e.g. where the presence or behaviour of a pet may have contributed to the lack of control). This could include any relevant details recorded in officer notes or free-text fields.

Q7. Please indicate the number of fines issued under the CD10 offence during each period and where held, the total revenue generated from these fines, broken down by each month of each calendar year.

RESPONSE

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

In relation to Q’ 5 & 6 of your particular request, the following exemption applies:

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

We consulted with our Motoring Unit who have advised that for the years 2022-2024  – for the offence of Driving whilst not in proper control which also contains cancelled tickets in the results as well as the disposals recorded for fixed penalties and prosecutions were 187. To locate all these offence reports on two different applications of Pentip and then to read each of the 187 tickets for officer notes, incident descriptions or free-text fields for the necessary text to be recorded would take in excess of 10 minutes for every offence.

We therefore estimate it would take 31 hours to comply with 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 Q’s 5 & 6, we may be able to assist you with your request. Please note that any information held is subject to exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act.