FOI Weapon Seizures from Schools (0605-2022/23)

Request

Q1. How many weapons were seized from schools in the area covered by your constabulary in the years 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021?

Q2. What category of weapon were these and how many of each were there? Eg. 2 knives, 3 guns, 1 sword etc

Q3. How old were the pupils who the weapons were seized from?

Q4. How many of these incidents resulted in pupils being excluded from school?

Q5. How many of these incidents resulted in criminal prosecution for the pupils?

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 to determine the number of weapons seized, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Furthermore, we cannot provide results for Q4 as we would not hold this information.

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.