FOI - Fireworks

Request:

1. The number of reports of anti-social behaviour involving fireworks made to your police force in each of the last five years.
2. The number of incidences of your force seizing illegal fireworks in each of the last five years.

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. “Fireworks” are not held in an easily searchable format on North Yorkshire Police systems. This information is generally held in a free text format. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually read all incidents/reports in the time period requested to see if fireworks are mentioned. This 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). It is possibale that we could do a “free-text” search on “fireworks”, however we cannot confirm the reliability of these results as it relies on the officer in case adding this to the free text field. 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.