FOI 916/25

Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request information relating to police force interactions relating to people seeking asylum within your jurisdiction between January 2023 and May 2025. Please provide a breakdown by month and year of: 

The number and type of interaction(s), the police have had with people seeking asylum when called to attend properties accommodating people seeking asylum operated by any of the Home Office accommodation providers; Mears, Serco and/or ClearSprings Ready Homes between January 2023 and May 2025 

The number of police call outs due to violence against the person involving people seeking asylum within your jurisdiction in public and residential areas 

The number of police call outs recorded as public order offences involving people seeking asylum within your jurisdiction in public and residential areas 

Please provide a breakdown of the type of crimes recorded under miscellaneous crimes against society within your jurisdiction relating to people seeking asylum between January 2023 and May 2025 

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(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit  

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query. Our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) does not capture either 'asylum seeker' or 'refugee' as a personal category. To retrieve any information would involve a manual trawl of thousands of occurrences to establish if there is any mention of ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’ within the occurrence log.

Whilst I cannot quantify exactly how long this would take it would most certainly exceed the 18 hours stipulated by the regulations to provide the data requested.

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.

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.