FOI Reports of children with weapons on school premises 2011-2022 (0741-2022/23)

Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide me with data on the total number of children caught with weapons on school premises between 2011 and this year.

Please include in this list:
• The type of weapon(s) that were seized in each case.
• The total number of weapons that were seized each year.
• The age of the child caught with said weapon in each case.

I would prefer to receive the information in a spreadsheet.

In it, each year from 2011 to 2022 should be broken down into the list above; the type of weapons that were seized in each incident, the total number of weapons that were seized and the age of the child caught with said weapon in each incident.

 

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. Where an incident / crime occurs at a place of education it is recorded as such, however not all places of education are known to us therefore the data cannot be accurately extracted. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all crimes and incidents which occurred in the above locations for the timeframe requested to determine the number of weapons seized, 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, 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.