FOI 608/25
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:
- The number of drivers stopped, fined, or prosecuted for offences related to illegal or excessively noisy exhaust systems, under the Road Traffic Act 1988 and the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986, for each of the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 to date.
- The number of Section 59 warnings (Police Reform Act 2002) issued for vehicles causing alarm, distress, or annoyance due to exhaust noise, over the same time period.
- If available, the top five locations (e.g., streets, towns, areas) within your force area where the highest number of such offences or warnings were recorded.
- If available, the highest recorded decibel readings from any enforcement equipment (e.g., sound meters) used to measure vehicle noise.
RESPONSE
Question 2
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.
The data you have requested is not recorded in a format that is easily retrievable. As there isn’t a specific category for Section 59 warnings, there are various categories in which these may be recorded under.
Therefore, an extensive search would need to be conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) under various occurrence types, including ‘ASB Nuisance’, ‘Road related offence’ and ‘Police Generated Resource Activity’. This would bring back tens of thousands of results.
We would be required to individually interrogate each occurrence, including the OEL (Occurrence Enquiry Log) in order to establish if they relate to a Section 59 warning and whether these were issued as a result of vehicles causing alarm, distress, or annoyance due to exhaust noise.
Whilst I am unable to quantify how long this research would take to answer question 2, it would most certainly exceed the 18 hours stipulated by the regulations.
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 2 of your request then we may be able to assist.