Account Freezing Orders (1215A/21)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am looking for information related to the following:
Please note, all information is in regards to West Midlands Police. I would like the information to be broken down by calendar years.
- The number of account freezing orders issued since 2017 – both combined and broken down by year
- The number of cases using account freezing orders that have resulted in a prosecution since 2017 – broken down by year
- The total amount of money / value of assets frozen by the force as a result of Account Freezing Orders – broken down by year (each year since first introduced)
- The amount of money / returned when Account Freezing Orders have been discharged / cases were not pursued – broken down by year
- The amount of money / value of assets returned when Account Freezing Orders have been lifted / cases were not pursued – broken down by year
- The number of times account freezing orders have been challenged / number of cases brought against the force concerning this issue – broken down by year
- How many of these cases have been successful / resulted in the account freezing order being overturned – broken down by year
Response
Please find attached our response. However, while the majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release the information in relation to question 6 because this information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 30(1)(a) – Investigations and proceedings
Section 40(2) – Personal information
These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:
In line with Section 30 above, I am required to complete a Prejudice Test/Public Interest Test (PIT) on disclosure. Please find this PIT attached (1215A_PIT).
Section 40(2) is an absolute and class based exemption if to release the information exists would breach the third party’s data protection rights. In this case to release this personal information would not constitute fair processing of the data. As this exemption is class based I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance I believe that the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
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 taken into account 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 taken into account 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.