Drink Driving (1609A/21)
Request
I would like to make a request for information on: Drink driving incidents and arrests made in the West Midlands area.
Please may this information cover 2019-2021 and be shown by month (Jan-Dec).
Could I also receive this data divided into rural vs urban areas.
Additionally,
– Which road in the West Midlands has the highest number of drink driving arrests in each year?
– What is the highest blood alcohol level of a drink driver recorded by the police in each of those years? With this could you confirm what the legal limit of blood alcohol is?
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).
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