FOI Driving Whilst Using a Mobile Phone (0038-2022/23)
Request
- The number of people stopped, warned, or issued a fixed penalty notice for using a mobile phone while driving under the new law that took effect on the 25th of March between the period of 25th March 2022 to 31st March 2022 inclusive.
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 usually required to retrieve that information. Where a driver is only stopped/warned for using a mobile phone whilst driving, this is not centrally recorded as a crime or incident due to no formal action being taken. To retrieve this information, it would be dependent on the officer making a record in their pocket notebooks. Therefore, a manual read of every officer’s pocket notebook would be required to determine if they stopped/spoke to an individual regarding the use of a mobile whilst driving during the timeframe requested. This would involve approaching officers and reading through hundreds of records, 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). We would be able to provide the total number of fixed penalty notices issued for the use of a mobile phone whilst driving however, due to the recent time period requested, fixed penalty notices may still be being processed and issued, therefore an accurate figure could not be provided until a time period has passed to allow all fixed penalty notices and any subsequent proceedings to be concluded.
The number of mobile phone offences captured by the safety camera vans is available on the following link:
Safety camera deployment | North Yorkshire Police
Please note, these offences can be dealt with via different routes including fixed penalty notice and court proceedings. 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.