FOI 351064

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 351064

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 5^th August 2024. Please find below the response to your request:

I would like to obtain any data from all the West Mercia districts, if possible, please. If not, I would specifically like Herefordshire.

For each of the districts please could you provide me with the following information:

- number of dog bites from 1980 to the present day in calendar years (or as far back as the data goes)

- where the bite took place

- events surrounding the dog bite

- details of the breed of the dog

- cause of the bite

- age of the victim

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. There is no specific offence for a dog attack/bite. There are over 2196 records of dangerously out of control dog. In order to ascertain whether the information you have requested is held would take in excess of 18 hours as each record would have to be checked individually.

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 information that 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

Under The Management Of Policing Guidelines information can be deleted off our systems after 6 years. We are therefore unable to confirm if information regarding incidents prior to 6 years ago are complete and accurate and have therefore provided information from 01/01/2018.

Please note: the table with ‘Victim’s age’ present only the number of offences (as requested) and not the number of victims. For this search the victim’s age is sorted by younger to older, and as there might be occasions where can be more than one victim linked to a crime of different ages, Only one victim per crime with the youngest age is included. Where the age is not known, this is stated as unknown.