FOI 18078
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0018078/26
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 6th July 2026. Please find below the response to your request:
Please provide me the following information:
- Number of deaths within your force area by those aged under 21 within the last 5 years that the police attended (This means the physical Presence of Uniformed Officers)
- Please provide a breakdown of this figure year by year and separate it into Gender (at Birth)
- For those that took place in public, please provide me a list of the recorded locations
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.
Our force recording practises changed in February 2024. After this date all sudden deaths were recorded on our crime management system and were categorised by the nature of the death. All persons linked to these records as linked as “involved parties”, this includes the deceased persons, family members, witnesses etc. To identify relevant reports, would requires a review of each incident where there is a person under the age of 21 linked, and establish who died and their age as well as the location (eg in public or not) and which type of officers attended.
Prior to this date these matters were only recorded on our call management system where any persons involved are recorded within the log. Therefore, to identify relevant incidents before February 2024 we would need to review every Sudden Death log.
There are 307 crimes linked to sudden death reports and 7266 incident logs. Therefore, 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.