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:
Covering the 12 month period 300117 to 290118 :
1. How many domestic disputes involving adults did Northumbria Police attend ?
2. How many of those disputes resulted in a DVPN being granted by a Supt ?
3. In how many of those cases did the DVPN relate to a male .
4. In how many cases when a DVPN was granted against a female , was the female involved in a same sex relationship ?
5. In how many of the cases where a DVPN was granted against a male , was it the first time Police had physically attended the address for a domestic related matter .
6. In relation to number 5 above . If any such cases exist , how many times was the DVPN granted where the recipient of the DVPN had been the original caller to the Police and had reported being assaulted .
For the purpose of 5 and 6 above do not include males in same sex relationships
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention. 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 by Northumbria Police, however cannot be retrieved for the following reasons.
The information requested is not held in a format that allows its extraction within the permitted 18 hour threshold.
In the time period requested there were in excess of 33,000 reported DV incidents. Each one of those reports would require a manual review to provide a response to each of the questions asked in this request. Even at a conservative estimate of 4 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 2750 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.
When applying Section 12 exemption our duty to assist under Section 16 of the Act would normally entail that we contact you to determine whether it is possible to refine the scope of your request to bring it within the cost limits. However, from the information we have outlined above I see no reasonable way in which we can do so.
