FOI 4886
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0004886/26
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 1st May 2026. Please find below the response to your request:
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am writing to request information relating to drink-driving offences.
For the purposes of this request, please include offences relating to driving or attempting to drive while over the legal alcohol limit, as well as being in charge of a vehicle while over the limit.
Q1. Daily breakdown
Please provide the total number of drink-driving offences recorded per day (by date) for the following periods:
20 November – 18 December 2022
14 June – 14 July 2024
Q2. Year-on-year comparison (same periods)
Please provide the total number of drink-driving offences recorded during the following date ranges (20 November – 18 December and 14 June – 14 July), for each of the years listed below:
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
Q3. (Optional) Hourly breakdown
Where available, please provide a breakdown of drink-driving offences by hour of day (0–23) for the periods listed in Q1 only.
If providing this information would exceed the cost limit, please prioritise Q1 and Q2 and disregard this question.
Q4. (Optional) Drug-driving offences
Where readily available, please provide the total number of drug-driving offences (i.e. driving or being in charge of a vehicle while over the prescribed drug limit) for:
20 November – 18 December 2022
14 June – 14 July 2024
If readily available, please also provide totals for these same date ranges in the following years:
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
Reply
Please accept my apologies for the late 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 are too many records. 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.
NOTE **There is no current query facility in our system to abstract this data so a manual trawl would have to be conducted.
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.
Please contact us again should you wish to submit a request for alternative/reduced information.