FOI 17811

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0017811/26

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 3^rd July 2026.  Please find below the response to your request:

Please provide, for each of the last five calendar years (or financial years, if that is how the data is held), the number of individuals dealt with by your force for:

1. a) drink driving offences;

1. b) drug driving offences; and

1. c) offences involving both drink driving and drug driving arising from the same incident.

Please provide the figures in a table, broken down by year.

If your force records arrests or charges rather than offences detected, please provide the equivalent data held and state the basis on which the figures are compiled.

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.

To provide the information accurately that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format.  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 below information 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

We have run the numbers from those arrested for drink and drug drive offences (table one) and the number of prosecution cases (tables 2-3).

There will be an element of duplication between those arrested and those prosecuted, plus a number of those who were not arrested (usually injured in a collision and taken to hospital) but were latterly prosecuted.

For us to provide an accurate number, we would have to manually review each case to establish if they were a duplication, which would far exceed the 18hr limit for FOIs.

Drive & Alcohol offences

Drive and Drug offences