FOI 421939

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 421939

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 11^th July 2025.  Please find below the response to your request:

Please could you provide the number of speeding offences recorded by mobile speed cameras in your force area between January and June 2023, broken down by month.

Additionally, I would be grateful for any recorded mentions in your incident logs or officer notes involving squirrels — particularly where squirrels have caused, witnessed or otherwise influenced road traffic offences.

While I understand this may fall outside your standard keyword filtering, I believe there is an emerging pattern of squirrel interference in high-speed driving zones, possibly coordinated.

Reply

I would be grateful for any recorded mentions in your incident logs or officer notes involving squirrels — particularly where squirrels have caused, witnessed or otherwise influenced road traffic offences.

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.

To ascertain whether any information is held or not would require a manual search of every incident logged and a request to all officers for their notebooks.

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”.

Therefore, in pursuance of the limits identified within Section 12 and associated legislation, we are unable to confirm or deny the existence of what relevant information may or may not be held by the Force.

In accordance with s.17(5) of the Act, this acts as a Refusal Notice.

Under s.16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. Unfortunately, in this instance I am unable to offer an alternative option

However, I can provide the information requested for question 1 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 could you provide the number of speeding offences recorded by mobile speed cameras in your force area between January and June 2023, broken down by month.