Offensive weapons in schools (1520A/23)
Request
I would like to know the number of reports received by the police of offensive weapons in schools or on school property in the years 2023 (up to October), 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.
I would like to know the number of reports received by police of violence by pupils towards school staff in schools or on school property in the years 2023 (up to October), 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation to violence by pupils towards school staff in schools or on school property in the years 2023 (up to October), 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. This is not a central recording category within our systems.
Therefore, to provide this information would require us to locate, retrieve and manually read each log to see if the information you have requested is contained within the summary of the report.
Please see the following calculation as to how long this would take to fulfill this part of your request.
316 records to see if this information was detailed within the summary would take 5 minutes per record. Therefore, this would take in excess of 26.5 hours to complete this task. This would be in addition to the work already completed.
Therefore, the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fee’s limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request
However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide some of the information, please see attached.