S136 MHA (991A/21)
Request
For each of the calendar years 2018, 2019, 2020, and the period 01/01/2021-29/06/2021 please provide:
1. How many children (aged under 18) were held in police custody under section 136 of the Mental Health Act.
2. For each, please provide a breakdown, giving their gender, age, and the length of time they were held in custody (in hours and minutes if known), and whether the place of safety was a police station, healthcare setting, other, or N/A.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
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). 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
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). We are unable to provide data prior to 2021 as this would involve a manual search, this search would exceed the FOI time limit.
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.