Begging Offences (558A/20)
Request
- Reports of Begging (and other offences coded under the Vagrancy Act) for Postcode WV10 0QB YTD (year to date) and for 2019.
- Number of offenders charged with Begging offences for the Postcode WV10 0QB YTD (year to date) and for 2019.
- Number of ASBOs / Protection Orders (that restrict access for the offender) issued or obtained for offenders year to date that cover the postcode area WV10 0QB and for 2019.
- Number of incidents coded as ASB or Begging where Officers have attended within 1 hour by Officers year to date and for 2019.
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 attached for question 4). 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). In relation to question 1, this is a non-notifiable offence, we can only give the number of arrests, however because the data requested is for a specific postcode, we have no means to link arrests with locations and therefore cannot provide an answer. For question 2, we are only able to find how many charges have occurred based on the offence, but we are again unable to pinpoint it to a specific location. Regarding question 3, we are only able to provide counts of instances when these protection orders have been breached, not how many were issued.
We would need to conduct a manual review of any relevant records in order to try and locate and retrieve answers to these three questions which would exceed the FOI time limit.
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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: