Coronavirus Deaths (60A/20)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please can you provide me with responses to the following, for each day since 1st January 2020 up until the day the response is answered:
- a) The daily number of dispatches or visits to addresses where a member of the public was found to be dead on arrival at the address.
- b) The daily number of dispatches or visits to addresses where a member of the public was found to be dead on arrival at the address when the person in question had been flagged (either by other emergency services or in communication sent to the force) as a potential or known coronavirus sufferer.
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). In order to locate and retrieve this information we would need to conduct a manual search of all of the above records to identify any deaths that were caused by Coronavirus / Covid 19, 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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: