FOI 0726-2023/24 - Incidents involving electric scooters

Request:

Q1. Please could you provide the total number of reports your police force has received this year so far (2023) about incidents involving electric scooters? Please also provide the total number for last year (2022) and 2021.

Q2. Please provide the total number of reports received about incidents involving electric scooters and please provide a breakdown of the total number of reports for each category of incident in each year. So, how many incidents reported involved a road collision with other vehicles or pedestrians, how many involved an electric scooter being stolen, how many involved anti-social behaviour and crimes etc. until the full number of different types of reports received involving electric scooters is reflected. Please provide the numbers for each of the above years.

Q3. Please provide the total number of, and the details of, incidents which led to formal action being taken such as arrests or charges. So how many arrests, charges or other types of formal action such as cautions have there been in relation to reports of incidents involving electric scooters and what were they for? And how many of these have resulted in convictions and, also, what were those for? Again please provide this information for all of the years above.

Please ensure that within the information requested above, it is clear how many alleged crimes involving an electric scooter have been recorded by your force for each of the years above, and please provide a breakdown of all the different types of crimes that were recorded in each year, so how many reports of anti-social behaviour involving an electric scooter were there, how many thefts involving an e-scooter were there and so on. If it requires free-searching terms in your database with the words ‘electric scooter’ or any other configuration please do so.

Response:

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review over 5500 records, to be able to ascertain if they specifically related to an e-scooter, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we may be able to provide information for part 1 and 3 of your request if you resubmit and omit part 2. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.