Level 1 Alarm responses (818A/23)
Request
- In total, how many level 1 responses have been received by West Midlands police?
- How many level 1 responses have been received, but no police had been dispatched (in the scenario that the alarm had not been cancelled by the ARC)?
- What is the average time of response, namely between receiving the alert from “Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC)” to police constable arriving onsite? Can this be broken down into two tables, one is by months and second table being the time of the day (Morning= 6am to 12noon, Afternoon=12 noon to 6pm, Evening=6pm to 12 midnight, Early morning= 12 midnight to 6am)?
The time period that the request covers: For the 12-month period between 1st January 2022 and 31st December 2022
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 enclosed). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request.
Q1: In total, how many level 1 responses have been received by West Midlands police?
| 2022 | Attended | Did not attend | Grand Total |
| Jan-22 | 283 | 86 | 369 |
| Feb-22 | 244 | 81 | 325 |
| Mar-22 | 287 | 102 | 389 |
| Apr-22 | 279 | 96 | 375 |
| May-22 | 262 | 92 | 354 |
| Jun-22 | 301 | 79 | 380 |
| Jul-22 | 309 | 103 | 412 |
| Aug-22 | 291 | 85 | 376 |
| Sep-22 | 316 | 86 | 402 |
| Oct-22 | 322 | 96 | 418 |
| Nov-22 | 312 | 106 | 418 |
| Dec-22 | 394 | 95 | 489 |
| Total | 3600 | 1107 | 4707 |
Q2: How many level 1 responses have been received, but no police had been dispatched (in the scenario that the alarm had not been cancelled by the ARC)?
Please see Question 1 for those incidents attended or not attended.
We are unable to provide the data for those alarms that were not cancelled. To locate this data would mean that each individual incident would need to be reviewed to see if this was the case. This exceeds the 18-hour time limit for the purposes of the FOI Act.
4707 x 5 mins = 392 hours
Q3: What is the average time of response, namely between receiving the alert from “Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC)” to police constable arriving onsite? Can this be broken down into two tables, one is by months and second table being the time of the day (Morning= 6am to 12noon, Afternoon=12 noon to 6pm, Evening=6pm to 12 midnight, Early morning= 12 midnight to 6am)?
Please be advised that this is not a valid Freedom of information Act request question as it does not fulfil Section 8 of the Act. It is not a request for specific recorded information, as it asks for `an estimate`, an “average” and the authority does not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information or giving an opinion or judgement that is not already recorded.
As this information would have to located and then calculated and created as we do not record this data in this format, the exemption applies.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently, statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be considered when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.
As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
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