Dangerous Dog Seizures (227A/23)
Request
For EACH of the previous two fiscal years (i.e. 2020/21, 2021/22) and 2022/23 – up to January 31 – please can you tell me:
a) The TOTAL number of dogs seized under the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991).
b) And the TOTAL number of dogs seized under the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991) that were destroyed.
Ideally, I wish this information to be broken down by breed of dog (e.g. Bull Terrier, greyhound, etc.).
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit of 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 file 227A_23_attachment.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
It is not possible to determine the breed information of each dog without manually going into each record of encounter. During the requested period however, there were 1,899 dogs seized and to examine each case, even allowing only one minute for each would take approximately 32 hours and the actual time needed to collate the information for each case is expected to be greater than one minute.
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.