FOI 293444

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 293444

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 23rd November 2023. Please find below the response to your request:

I would like to request the following information:

1. How many road traffic accidents involving uninsured drivers have been reported from 1 November 2020 to 1 November 2023?
2. Could this information be broken down by month if possible?

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.

The information you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In order for us to provide an accurate figure for all collisions involving uninsured drivers, it would require us to manually review every no insurance matter to establish if the driver was involved in a collision and manually review all live collision cases, which would far exceed the 18hr limit for FOIs. In accordance with s.17(5) of the Act, this acts as a Refusal Notice.

However, In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide the a breakdown of the information we can extract from our collision recording system as this was retrieved during our initial research. This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
Please note, this will not reflect a true picture of un-insured drivers involved in collisions. There will be other, non-recordable collisions where a driver is identified as not having insurance. There is no requirement to record these matters as a collision, so West Mercia Police cannot easily report on those matters. There will also be an element of live collision cases, where West Mercia Police have not yet resulted the matter, therefore they would not appear in the attached data.

Road Traffic Collisions Involving Uninsured Drivers 1 November 2020 to 1 November 2023

Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint. Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please contact the Information Compliance Unit quoting the reference number above.