Electric Scooters (513A/21)
Request
Please provide answers to questions 1-3 for the calendar years 2018, 2019, 2020 and for the period 1 January 2021 to 31 March 2021 (or up to the latest date for which you have data).
1) Please provide the number of reported incidents involving electric scooters (i.e. the term “electric scooter” or “e-scooter” is mentioned in the incident report);
2) If it is within the time/cost limit set by the FOI Act, please provide a brief description and the month of each reported incident listed in your answer to question;
3) How many e-scooters / electric scooters that have been seized by your police force?
Response
Unfortunately our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached files 513A_21_attachment1.pdf & 513A_21_attachment2.pdf). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
Information with regard to question 3 (seized scooters) is not available in a readily retrievable format. This is because we do not have a category for e-scooters / electric scooters within our property or vehicle recovery systems and therefore in order to determine this information, we would need to conduct a manual trawl of these systems. Such a search however would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: