FOI 746/25

REQUEST

For each calendar year from 2019, including 2025 to date:

1. The number of offences that were categorised as an acid attack or corrosive fluid offence, broken down by month.
2. The number of offences mentioned in question 1 that were recorded as Violent Offences within the category 'Violence Against the Person'.
3. The number of threats of acid attacks/corrosive fluid attacks against the person, broken down by month.
4. The ethnicity, age and gender of victims of the offences mentioned in question 1, broken down by calendar year.
5. The ethnicity, age and gender of victims of the offences mentioned in question 2, broken down by calendar year.
6. The ethnicity, age and gender of victims of the offences mentioned in question 3, broken down by calendar year.
7. The ethnicity, age and gender of suspects of the offences mentioned in question 1, broken down by calendar year.
8. The ethnicity, age and gender of suspects of the offences mentioned in question 2, broken down by calendar year.
9. The ethnicity, age and gender of suspects of the offences mentioned in question 3, broken down by calendar year.
10. Outcomes of the offences mentioned in 1, broken down by calendar year.
11. Outcomes of the offences mentioned in 2, broken down by calendar year.
12. Outcomes of the offences mentioned in 3, broken down by 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 your request, the following exemption applies:

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

We conducted a search on our crime and incident recording system (NICHE RMS) under the following Home Office code within the requested time frame. This search retrieved 593 occurrences.

• 008/76/OW19013: Threaten a person with an offensive weapon / bladed article / corrosive substance in a private place - Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Sec 52(1) & (6). 

To retrieve the data for question 3, 6, 9 and 12 of the request we estimate it would take 2-3 minutes to interrogate each occurrence to see if it relates to ‘threat of acid/corrosive fluid attacks as appose to an offensive weapon/bladed article.

We therefore estimate it would take 25 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 questions 3, 6, 9 and 12 we may be able to assist with the request.