Claires Law (1814A/23)
Request
As a freedom of information request, please provide the data regarding the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (also known as Clare’s Law). For this request, please provide the following data from 2014 up until the most current date available at the point of production. If data as early as 2014 is not available, please provide it from the first available date onwards.
Please provide annual totals of:
– The number of ‘right to know’ applications
– The number of ‘right to ask’ applications
If available, please also provide annual totals of:
– The number of ‘right to know’ applications which resulted in disclosure after 28 days, and the number which resulted in disclosure after 35 days.
– The number of ‘right to ask’ applications which resulted in disclosure after 28 days, and the number which resulted in disclosure after 35 days.
Additionally, if available, please also provide:
– For each year, the longest time it took for a; right to ask’ disclosure to be provided
– For each year, the longest time it took for a ‘right to know’ disclosure to be provided
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation to right to know and right to ask applications, in January 2022 West Midlands Police created a bespoke team who now process all applications for the force.
Prior to 2022 we would need to locate, retrieve and review each individual record to ascertain if it was a Right to Know or Right to Ask application.
The time to locate and retrieve information for the years 2014/ 2015/ 2016/ 2017/ 2018/ 2019/ 2020/ 2021 would exceed the 18hours time limit for the purpose of the FOI Act.
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 fees 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 information in relation to Information in respect of 2022 onwards.
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fee’s legislation for any subsequent requests.
For the year 2022:
Under section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The information you requested is available on the following website.
Claire’s Law (428A/23) – Freedom of Information – West Midlands Police (west-midlands.police.uk)
for 1st Jan – 21st Nov 2023
The number of ‘right to know’ applications = 540
The number of ‘right to ask’ applications = 1951
The remainder of the request for the year 2023:
– The number of ‘right to know’ applications which resulted in disclosure after 28 days, and the number which resulted in disclosure after 35 days.
– The number of ‘right to ask’ applications which resulted in disclosure after 28 days, and the number which resulted in disclosure after 35 days.
Additionally, if available, please also provide:
– For each year, the longest time it took for a; right to ask’ disclosure to be provided
– For each year, the longest time it took for a ‘right to know’ disclosure to be provided
This information is not recorded in a retrievable format.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website.
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