FOI Domestic Abuse 999 Calls (0097-2022/23)

Request

1) Please can you provide data pertaining to the number of 999 calls that were made to report or in relation to domestic violence for the calendar years: 

• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019
• 2021/2022 (to date)

2) Please can you provide data pertaining to the number of 999 calls relating to domestic violence across 2016 – 2022 respectively that were assigned:

• Grade 1
• Grade 2
• Grade 3
• Grade 4

Please also provide the time taken to attend for each part of the question.

3) Please can you provide a copy of your Call Grades and Deployment Policy or direct me to where I can find this.

4) Please can you tell me the total number of calls relating to domestic violence that were assigned grade 1, 2, 3 or 4 in comparison to or categorised by the area the incident was reported to have taken place in or the area officers were instructed to attend for the calendar years: 

• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019
• 2021/2022 (to date)

Grades 1 to 3 typically refer to an emergency response, a prompt response and a routine response. Please provide a description of the different grades (including expected response times to attend) used by the force if these differ.

5) Please provide the longest individual time taken to attend a grade 1, 2, 3 or 4 emergency call in 2021 for domestic violence, including what grade the call was assigned. 

6) Please provide the total number of occasions that police did not attend: 

a) Grade 1,
b) Grade 2
c) Grade 3 

d) Grade 4 emergencies last year (2021) relating to domestic violence.

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. For Question 1, in order to retrieve the number of 999 calls with a report of domestic violence dating back to 2016, it would be necessary to manually read all records to as there is no reporting system that would extract this information. As you can appreciate this would well exceed the time limits allowed under the Act. Similarly, for Question 6 our records are only present since April 2021.

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). Our reporting systems are on a rolling timeline and we may be able to answer Question 1 to approximately May 2019. However, it is unclear whether we would be able to extract other questions within your request such as the amount of time taken to attend a report, and this may therefore re-engage Section 12 on a new request submitted.

I am therefore 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.