Dog Attacks (131A/23)
Request
1) How many dog attacks have there been from January 20th 2018 to now?
2) What was the relationship between the victim and the dogs? (E.g. Pet, random dog attack, dog walker)
3) What injuries were sustained and what was the outcome? (E.g. Were victims hospitalised/died/sustained life-changing injuries)
4) What was the breed of dog involved in each attack?
5) What happened to the dogs following the attacks? (E.g. Were they rehomed/destroyed)
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 131A_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
Although it has been possible to provide information for question 1 of your request using an electronic search of our crime system, this isn’t possible for questions 2, 3, 4 and 5. Instead to determine this further detail we would need to manually go into every case. During the period however there were more than 4,200 cases and to examine each of these, even allowing a bare minimum of only five minutes per record, would take more than 350 hours and this exceeds 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: