Arrests under Communications Act (217A/21)
Request
This FOI relates to Section 127 (1) and 127 (2) of the Communications Act, which can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127
- How many people have been arrested under suspicion of an offence under Section 127 (1) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
- How many people have been convicted of an offence under Section 127 (1) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
- How many people have been arrested under suspicion of an offence under Section 127 (2) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
- How many people have been convicted of an offence under Section 127 (2) of the Communications Act 2003? Please provide the figures for: (a) 2018, (b) 2019, (c) 2020.
Response
Please be advised that the specific information that you have requested is not available in an electronically searchable format. In relation to questions 2 and 4, we are unable to provide prosecution data as this information is not routinely fed back into our systems, and we do not have access to magistrate’s court data.
This means that 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 fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
However, in order to assist, we can provide the information requested for questions 1 & 3. Please find this information below.
| Arrest Date | Section Of Act | Grand Total | |
| Sec 1 | Sec 2 | ||
| 2018 | 93 | 11 | 104 |
| 2019 | 90 | 13 | 103 |
| 2020 | 84 | 16 | 100 |
| Grand Total | 267 | 40 | 307 |
These data should be interpreted with caution; the figures provided 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.
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
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