FOI Rural Crime (98-2024/25)

Request

The request is for data from the last year, but this can be the most recent 12-month period that suits your reporting period.
Q1. Total number of full-time police officers employed by your force, and the number of civilians within your police area.
Q2. a) Whether you have a unit dedicated to rural crime.
b)  If so, please outline how many members of staff are in this unit, and how much funding it receives as part of your overall budget.
c) Do you have a policy to determine the apportionment of budget between Rural / Urban – if so please provide
Q3. Please complete the following equipment table:
Your force’s current inventory of the following items: Current Inventory % of inventory allocated principally to Rural Crime
High-power torches
Microchip scanners
Thermal spotters
Dedicated Rural Drone surveillance kits
Mobile ANPR Camera
4x4 vehicles (Quad, SUV etc)
Q4. Number of reported cases in your police area over the past twelve months of the following crime categories (if you do not categorise in the same way please share details of the most appropriate data subset):
Flytipping
Sheep rustling
Hare coursing
Poaching
Machinery / GPS theft
Livestock worrying
Heritage Crime
Raptor Persecution
Unauthorised Encampments
Q5. What training is available to staff on rural crime – please complete the following table
Is training available to call handlers and police staff on the following crime categories If available -how often is the training updated
Flytipping
Sheep rustling
Hare coursing
Poaching
Machinery / GPS theft
Livestock worrying
Heritage Crime
Raptor Persecution
Unauthorised Encampments
Q6. Number of full-time police officers employed exclusively to tackle crime within your police area, who have never been, and will never be, re-deployed to support urban issues as needed. If the answer is zero, I will assume you have no regulations or policies in place to stop force members being drawn into urban issues.
A) Is there a universal tag for the crimes listed in question 4, and if so; B) is your force able to access data sets to compare these crimes with other police areas.
Q7. For 999 calls where a police officer(s) were deployed from your force, what was the average time from the call being received in your control room, to the officer(s) reaching their deployment destination for calls graded “Immediate” in the past year – a) in the whole force area and b) specifically within rural areas within your force parameter.
A) In the last year how many 999 calls relating to the categories in Question 4; a) did and b) did not receive an in person response. B) How many 999 calls of all types in total A) did and B) did not receive and in person response
Q8. In the last year, in relation to Section 60C-E of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which provides a criminal offence for “residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle”:
a. how many arrests were made by your force?
b. how many times have the associated seizure and forfeiture powers been used?
c. In addition how many times has your force exercised powers under:
d. s61 to remove trespassers with a common purpose of residing on land;
e. or s62A to direct trespassers to an alternative site?

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 reports in relation to residing/trespassing on land to determine where S62 has been used. This would involve hundreds of reports, 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 some information for Q2, as well as the following crime data Sheep rustling, Hare coursing, Poaching, Machinery / GPS theft & livestock worrying if you resubmit your request.  If you wish to discuss this, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Further to the above, please see below for information to assist in the rest of your request.

Q1. The information you have requested is published under the following links:

Police workforce England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

North Yorkshire statistics | North Yorkshire Council

I have therefore decided to exempt providing you with a response (to question 6 and 7) pursuant to Section 21 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act).

Section 17 of the Act requires North Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Section 21 – Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means

Section 21 is an absolute class based exemption and I am not required to consider the harm or public interest when applying this exemption.

Pursuant to Section 17(1) of the Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice in response to your request.

Q4. No information held by North Yorkshire Police - Further information in relation to fly-tipping is published under the following link Fly-tipping: council responsibilities - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Q4. Heritage Crime - The information you have requested is published under the following link see Q5. FOI York Stone Thefts (1236-2023/24) | North Yorkshire Police

Q4. Unauthorised encampments – The information you have requested is published under the following link FOI Transit Sites (807-2023/24) | North Yorkshire Police

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.