FOI 26747

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0026747/26

 

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 20^th August 2026. Please find below the response to your request:

 

 

Please provide the following for each financial year from 2015/16 to the most recent year for which data is available:

 

1. The total number of hoax, malicious, nuisance, or otherwise deliberately false calls made to the 999 emergency service received by West Mercia Police.

 

2. The number of individuals identified in connection with making hoax 999 calls.

 

3. The number of arrests made in relation to hoax 999 calls.

 

4. The number of prosecutions and/or charges brought in relation to hoax 999 calls.

 

If the force does not record data specifically under the term "hoax 999 calls", please provide any equivalent data relating to malicious, nuisance, prank, abusive, or deliberately false emergency calls.

 

 

 

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. Incidents closed as PS Hoax Calls and contact records closed as Abandoned/Hoax Calls also include accidental and silent calls. These cannot be separated from calls where there is evidence that the 999 call was made intentionally without a manual review of each log. Also, there is no formal definition of a Hoax/Nuisance call on our crime management system and there is no common reference between our call management and crime management systems. We would therefore also need to check each log to ascertain if any were recorded as crimes to answer the remaining questions. 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.

 

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 I am unable to identify information that could be supplied within the fees limit.

 

 

However, we can provide the information below 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.

 

Caveats:

 

Under Management of Police Information Guidance data may be deleted from our systems after 6 years. We therefore cannot assess the accuracy or completeness of any data recorded prior to this date and have therefore only provided data recorded within a full fiscal year within the last 6 calendar years.

 

If a hoax 999 call requires police attendance, an incident record is created. Prior to July 2020, not all 999 calls were recorded on the command and control system. Since then, every call has been recorded as a contact record and, where necessary, escalated to an incident.

 

A 999 call may be recorded as an Abandoned/Hoax Contact Record if no further action is required. If further enquiries or police action are needed, it will be escalated to an incident.

 

 

 

999 Calls
	PS Abandoned Call	PS Hoax Call	Contact Records Close as Abandoned/Hoax	Total
Apr - Jun 2020	3069	30		3099
Jul 2020 - Apr 2021	8936	138	3085	12159
2021/22	13488	322	7059	20869
2022/23	17900	359	10240	28499
2023/24	7981	363	33607	41951
2024/25	4023	408	29415	33846
2025/26	3826	233	29648	33707
2026/27 YTD	1749	129	15229	1710