Missing People (1196A/23)
Request
1.How many missing persons incidents were recorded by the force between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, broken down by the 19 official Census 2021 ethnic group classifications for the persons reported as missing?
2. Please provide the data on missing persons incidents for 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 and for 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 using the older ethnicity classifications that forces previously used to report to the National Crime Agency UK Missing Persons Unit.
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation to data broken down into the census categories as this is not how we record our data. Each record would need to be located, retrieved and manually read and categorised into these classifications.
There are 1700 records and it would take 2 minutes to locate, retrieve and re categorise these to complete this would take in excess of 57 hours to complete this task.
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
However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request, we only have access to 7 ethnicity categories therefore we have provided what information we can, please see attached.