Unlicensed Music Events (1896A/23)
Request
Please can you conduct a keyword search for: “UME” “Unlicensed Music Event” “Rave” and “Illegal Rave” for the calendar years 2021, 2022 and 2023 (to date) broken down by month.
Response
Please find attached our response.
Please note: We have searched our incident database between 1 January 2021 and 11 December 2023 for ‘UME’ ‘unlicensed music event’ ‘Rave’ and ‘illegal Rave’ within the title, details and closing text fields.
Keywords
‘UME’ – this search retrieved 32,703 logs for the above time period, containing words such as argument, assumed, costume, document, instrument, monument, numerous, number, presumed etc
‘Rave’ – this search retrieved 16,926 logs for the above time period, containing words such as travel, travel bus, travel document, travelled, travellers, travelling, Travelodge, gravelly hill, Walsgrave etc.
Therefore, to locate and retrieve this information would take in excess of 1600 hours and would exceed the FOI time limit, however, for keywords ‘Unlicensed Music Event’ and ‘Illegal Rave’ we have been able to provide the attached.
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 document / attached file FILENAME). 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.