Speeding and bus lanes (1254A/20)

15 January 2021 | Incident and Crime Statistics, Roads Policing and Safety Cameras

Request

Response

Question 1:

Under section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The information you requested is available on the following website.

http://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/

For example:

https://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/14068_17_attachment.pdf

The above link gives total speeding fines for 2013 – 2017

https://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/speeding-arrests-201820192020-877a-20/

The above link gives total speeding fines 2018 to 30^th sept 2020

https://foi.west-midlands.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/attachment-439A_20.pdf

The above link gives 2018 and 2019 total speeding camera and non camera – broken down into speeds.

The only data missing are the latest total speeding fines issued which are as follows:

Month / Year	Total
October 2020	5234
November 2020 (up to 29th Nov)	5145

 

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 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.

For the speeds recorded per year, these have been grouped as there are in excess of 300,000 records and to list each individual speeds will exceed the 18 hour time frame.

 

Year	Speeds Recorded in Groups (in mph)
	20 – 40	41 – 60	61 – 80	81 – 100	101 – 120	121 – 200	Unknown
2015	18366	20498	5108	603	95	3	72
2016	23948	27502	1554	363	57	1	75
2017	19173	13423	4658	348	53	3	39
2018	Please see published data above
2019	Please see published data above
2020 up to 29 Nov 2020	25505	28315	13859	789	74	1	11

 

Unknown = is where the data has been recorded as a blank on the data field.

 

Year	Gender
	Male	Female	Unknown
2015	GENDER NOT RECORDED FOR THESE YEARS
2016
2017
2018	37936	16086	3373
2019	43769	17956	4322
2020	45491	17893	5170

 

Unknown = gender not recorded

In the years 2015 to 2017 the gender was not a required data field and no data has therefore been recorded.

We are unable to provide data on location and age as the search facility does not allow this function and often the location and age is recorded elsewhere and in differing places in each record. Therefore to search all the records for this data would exceed the cost.

Question 2 

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)

We are unable to provide data on the number of officers by force allocated to traffic/road safety duties years 2015 -2021.

This is because each individual officer would have to be contacted in order to accurately assess if they had been allocated to any traffic / road safety duties.  This could apply to every traffic officer, neighbourhood police officer, and response officer.  Each officer would need to trawl back through their pocket note books to see when they performed such duties.  Sometimes these duties may not even be recorded. Also “any traffic / road safety duties” is very broad and open to interpretation.  This could be from simply directing traffic or putting out police cones, to dealing with a fatal road traffic collision.

For this question I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Question 3

The number of cars entering bus lanes and fines then administered in information not held by West Midlands Police.  The reason for this is because it is the local authority for each area that enforces this area of road traffic offence.

My only suggestion would be to decide which local area you require and submit a separate freedom of information request for that area.

………….

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

As recommended as good practice by the Information Commissioner’s Office a version of this response may be published on the West Midlands Police website.

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