Fleet Breakdowns (1380A/23)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act can I please request the following data for the calendar years 2018, 2019, 2022, 2021, 2022 and 2023-present:
- On how many occasions did a police patrol car break down?
- On how many occasions did a patrol car break down on the way to an incident?
- In each case, what was the cause of the break down?
- How much did it cost to fix?
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 document / attached file FILENAME). 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). To locate and retrieve information in respect of questions 2,3 and 4 would exceed the FOI time limit. To obtain the cost we would need to go through every single job record and work out each cost, we would not be able to say if the vehicle had broken down on the way to a job, we do not hold that information. Also, in relation to the cause of the breakdown, again every record would need to be manually reviewed.
We estimate that to manually review this information would equate to 344 hours.
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.