FOI Vehicle Noise Complaints (19-2024/25)

Request

Following a recent government report into roadside noise camera trials to tackle illegal vehicle modifications and excessive vehicle noise, I am interested in the following:

Q1. Numbers of noisy vehicle complaints in the last 5 complete years, year on year.
Q2. The outcomes of those complaints, i.e. numbers of NFA, driver fines, seizures of vehicles, and any NIPs.
Q3. For NFAs, why was no further action taken?
Q4. Total numbers of excessive vehicle noise offences and/or tickets in the last 5 complete years, year on year.
Q5. Any information on noisy exhaust initiatives in your force, i.e. the nature of any initiatives, their dates, length, and outcomes.

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. whether a road traffic offence is in relation to excessive noise is not recorded within a specific field. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all crimes across the requested timeframe to determine which, if any are relevant to your request. This would involve thousands of reports, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. Furthermore, the reason a person would be NFA for such offences is not recorded within a specified field. We would need to manually review all offences to determine the reasons why an NFA was recorded. This would further exceed the time 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, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the information within the cost threshold.  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.