Clare’s Law (458A/21)
Request
I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in respect of information your force holds on ‘Clare’s Law’ (Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme) data. This is for a British Academy research project on victim/survivor experiences/perspectives on Clare’s Law schemes in England and Wales.
I would like to know the following information:
- How many RTAs requests were made by someone other than the victim to your force in the years 2018-20, broken down by year (this could include friends, family members or professionals).
- How many of these RTAs resulted in disclosure broken down by year.
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). 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). RTA’s are not stored in a searchable format and would require the above 2167 total records to be reviewed manually in order to answer the remainder of this request, this 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.