Dangerous Dogs (790A/22)
Request
Please can you tell me:
- Q1: The numbers of dogs seized by your police force (dogs that are out of control, aggressive, have attacked someone or are considered dangerous) from 2017 to 2022?
- Q2: How many dogs have been put down/destroyed in your force area from 2017 to 2022?
- Q3: How many suspected banned breeds of dogs have been seized by your force from 2017 to 2022?
- Q4: What is the annual cost to your force of kennels, veterinary treatment, and of putting down/destroying these dogs? (From 2017 to 2022).
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. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request.
For Question 2, every record would need to be checked to see if the dog had been put down / destroyed. This would exceed the 18 hours for the purposes of the FOI Act.
For Question 3 we have provided overall seized figures. However, due to the way the system operates we cannot differentiate how many dogs were allowed to remain at home under the terms of the seizure matrix. These figures represent the number of dogs investigated for offences, and recorded on the system, but many will not have been removed from their location. To retrieve this information would require an individual assessment of each case.
| (Name of police force) | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 (until the end of June) |
| Q1 the numbers of dogs seized (out of control, aggressive or dangerous dogs) | 629 | 671 | 773 | 786 | 975 | 316 |
| Q2: The number of dogs which have been put down/destroyed | cost | cost | cost | cost | cost | cost |
| Q3: The number of suspected banned breeds of dogs that have been seized | 311 | 266 | 363 | 538 | 630 | 20 |
| Q4: The annual cost of kennels, veterinary treatment, and putting down/destroying dogs | See below | See below | See below | See below | See below | See below |
Q4: We have a yearly budget of £337,000 for the cost of kennelling, vet treatment etc for seized dogs.
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