FOI 548/25

REQUEST 

1. The number of times your force has contacted a school following an incident of domestic abuse, as per Operation Encompass, since the act became statutory on 24 May 2024.
2. How long it took for the school to be contacted after each of these domestic abuse incidents were attended by police.

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 completed using our crime and incident reporting system (NICHE RMS) for all ‘Operation Encompass’ referrals. This search retrieved 9326 referrals during the specified time period. 

We estimate that it would take approximately three to four minutes to interrogate each referral to identify the type of setting and the time it took for the incident to be contacted and attended by police.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 544 hours to retrieve the requested information.

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.