Coronavirus- Fines, Arrests and Incidents (40A/20 and 41A/20)
Request
REQUEST 40A/20
I would be grateful if you could please provide:
The number of individuals (i) given a £60 fine (ii) arrested for failing to comply with requirements imposed under the Coronavirus Act 2020 between 30th March & 5th April 2020
The above number broken into the following categories, wherever available
Gender
Ethnicity (White/BME if specific ethnicity would be too identifying)
Age (in 10 year brackets)
REQUEST 41A/20
The number of reports of ‘concerns regarding how the Government measures to tackle Coronavirus are being adhered to’ made between 30th March & 5th April 2020
If possible I would appreciate if the information were in a format broken down by day and medium of the report (phone & online form).
Response
Our data are not organised in centrally retrievable format to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act Information in relation to FPNs is not held in an electronically retrievable format so each officer would need to be contacted to see whether they had issued an individual with a notice for a fixed penalty.
Individuals would be arrested for the substantive offence rather than failing to comply with the requirements imposed under the coronavirus act. For example Breach of the peace. Therefore each arrested record would need to located and retrieved for this time period and the summary read to see if this contains a mention of the Coronavirus Act.
This would also apply to the number of reports received, each log would need to be examined to see if this related to breaches imposed by the Coronavirus Act.
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.
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
I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
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