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:
In your force area for the years 2019/2020/2021
1) In your force have you recorded any deaths involving e-scooters.
2) How many people have been injured riding e-scooters.
3) How many people have been injured by e-scooters.
4) How many e-scooters have you seized for being used illegally.
5) How many fines have you issued in relation toe-scooters.
6) How many people have faced/are facing a criminal prosecution in relation to e-scooters.
In Response:
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 points 1, 2 & 3 as in excess of 960 returns, which have been generated from initial searches, would need to be manually reviewed to provide a response. These parts alone have been estimated to far exceed 18 hours. Even at a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information alone would take over 80 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:
1. The number of deaths relating to e-scooter use, on the condition that you are satisfied by a text search only.
4. How many e-scooters have been seized for being used illegally.
At point 6 Its unclear what is meant by ‘in relation to e-scooters’ as this could encompass many scenarios – ie theft of e-scooter etc. If you can be more specific we can perhaps look at this point further?
If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.
Point 5 – this information is not held.
