Mental Health (820A/20)
Request
1) The number of calls for officers to attend where “mental health” was flagged and/or cited as a factor in the call in the last three years (2018,2019 and 2020 so far)? Please break this down by year and month. Please provide as much detail about the nature of the incident as possible. Please say how many of the incidents’ involved under 18s and how many were for those aged over 18.
2) The number of recorded cases where section 136 of the Mental Health Act was used to detain a member of the public in the last three years (2018,2019 and 2020 so far)? Please break this down by year and month.
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). The age (date of birth) field within our recording system isn’t always completed, therefore we would need to conduct a manual review of each incident to see if it has been recorded in the log somewhere, 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.