fireworks incidents 15/10/20- 14/11/2020 (1237A/20)
Request
For between the 15th of October, up to and including the 14th of November 2020.
1) The number of calls received by your force, regarding firework use.
2) The number of incidents where fireworks have been used against your Police officers.
3) The number of incidents of illegal use of fireworks.
4) The number of incidents of anti-social behaviour regarding fireworks.
5) Provide all records you may hold of any injuries relating to firework use.
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 enclosed below). 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.
Please note that the reason that a call for service figure is higher than that of the incidents is because a call for service can be finalised as Admin. For example a member of the public can call and report fireworks, advice can be given over the phone and the call closed. An incident would result in the matter going further and an officer potentially attending the scene if required to do so.
We are able to provide the figures below but some may be duplicate reports, some admin and in order to retrieve more accurate data would result in each individual report being evaluated to see if a firework was used against an officer but recorded differently, if injury was caused etc.
| Questions | Total |
| Q1- The count of calls for service | 2,174 |
| Q2 – The count of incidents where stated that a firework has been used against Officers / vehicle | 6 |
| Q3- The count of incidents | 1,894 |
| Q4- The count of ASB closed incident types | 1,065 |
| Q5 – The count of incidents containing the word ‘injury’ relating to misuse of firework | 5 |
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
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.
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