FOI 0491-2026/27- Incidents at non-professional football matches

Request:

This request concerns incidents investigated by the police occurring during non-professional football matches.

I require the listed information about all incidents investigated by the police between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2025, which meet the below criteria.

Day of occurrence: SUNDAY ONLY

Location type/tag: Parks, Recreation Grounds, Playing Fields, or Sports Venues Keyword in log: "FOOTBALL" OR "REFEREE" OR "PITCH" OR "MATCH" OR "GAME"

Please state:

1) The date and time the incident took place.

2) The location of the incident. Including the venue and city/town/village.

3) The team who the alleged offender was playing for (if applicable).

4) What potential crime was being investigated.

5) What the outcome of the investigation was.

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 all crimes recorded within the specified timeframe where the MO location is park, recreation grounds, playing fields, sports club/pavilion, sports stadium where the MO remarks mention football, referee, pitch, match, game and then filtered only for crimes recorded don a Sunday, to establish the venue location and the team who the alleged offender was playing for. This would mean reading thousands 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 if you provide us with the specific addresses of the specific venues required. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant. 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.