FOI 240683
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 240683
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 6th April 2023. Please find below the response to your request:
Would you please be able to tell me:
- How many gun certificates issued by your force are currently in effect?
- How many new certificates have been approved in the past 12 months (from today)?
- How many applications have been rejected in the past year?
- How many have been revoked, and could I please have a breakdown of the reasons?
- How many times have gun(s) been taken off someone and subsequently returned in the past year?
- How many cases are you aware of where someone with a gun certificate has committed, or is alleged to have committed, a firearm offence in the past year?
- How many cases are you aware of where someone with a gun certificate has committed, or is alleged to have committed, any other type of offence in the past year?
Reply
Your request for information has been considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”), and I am not obliged to provide the information requested. S.12(1) of the Act states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. For police forces in England and Wales, the "appropriate limit" is £450 or 18 hours of work as set by the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. S.12(2) of the Act exempts a public authority from its obligations under Section 1(1) - the duty to confirm if the information being requested is held, if to provide that confirmation alone would exceed the “appropriate limit”.
The information you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. The last two questions would need a review of each and every single individual holder on police intelligence systems of which there are in excess of 30,000 and it has been estimated it would take about 20 minutes to review each individual to find and record the information that is being requested that may be held in the case notes. To review 30,000 individual records would equate 10,000 hours work (30,000x20)/60.
The cost of providing you with this information, if held, is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.17(5), this acts as a Refusal Notice for this request. Under s.16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. Unfortunately, due to the volume of records that would need to be reviewed and the fact that our systems, which are national systems, simply don’t have the search facilities for such requests, as such I am unable to identify information that could be supplied within the fees limit.