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:
For each of the last three years (27 June 2020 - 26th June 2021, 27th June 2021 - 26th June 2022 and 27th June 2022 - 26th June 2023) can you please provide the following information:
1. How many reports did you receive of drones illegally operating within the restricted airspace around Newcastle Airport?
2. How many arrests were made as a result of reports for 1?
3. What other action was taken in respect of 1 and 2 such as fines/drone equipment being confiscated?
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 by Northumbria Police.
I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.
1. There were no crimes returned but there were nine incidents that mentioned the keyword 'Drone' in the incidents that occurred at Newcastle Airport, all of which happened between 27/06/2020 and 26/06/2022.
2. There were no arrests made as a result of those incidents identified in question 1.
3. All of the incidents above where the officer made an attendance have been reviewed and in all cases no drone pilots were identified therefore this question has a nil return.
The below should be noted when viewing the figures above:
- The data has been taken from Systems where the address of Newcastle Airport was searched for the keyword 'drone'.
- The incidents where the officers made an attendance were reviewed to discover whether the drone pilot was identified, in all cases there were no drones or pilots found.
- It should be noted that not all incidents are crimed and that crimes can be logged without an incident being created.
- Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
- The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
