Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
1. I'd like to know how many of the following offences were reported to your force via the 101 number in the 2021 calendar year:
A. Rape
B. Burglary
C. Stalking
D. Hate crime
2. I'd also like to know your average 101 waiting time for 2021 calendar year.
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information requested is not already held statistically nor is it held in a format that would allow its extraction from systems within the permitted 18 hour threshold. This is particularly relevant at point 1 as to provide a response to this point would entail each call being reviewed to establish if it had been in relation to a report of the offences above in the first instance and not just as a result of an incident initially called in via 101 call from which a subsequent report of a crime had been the outcome. This would entail manually searching tens of thousands records which would far exceed the permitted 18 hours, therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00
You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for your request.
As part of your request would exceed the prescribed limit, as defined by the Act, there is no requirement for Northumbria Police to provide a response to the remaining parts of your request. However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an initial assessment of the information that may be provided within the time constraints would be question 1 in relation to the number of any crime leading from an incident initially called in via 101
If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.
At point 2 - We do not hold an average 101 waiting time for 2021, and therefore this data cannot be supplied.
