Upskirting (642A/23)
Request
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information on upskirting from West Midlands Police:
* How many allegations of upskirting were made to your force between 2016 – 2018? Please provide the data on an annual basis
* How many allegations of upskirting were made to your force from 2019-2022? Please provide the data on an annual basis
* How many people were charged with upskirting by your force from 2019-2022? Please provide the data on an annual basis
* How many charges of upskirting were made by your force from 2019 – 2022? Please provide the data on an annual basis
* Of the people you charged with upskirting from your 2019-2022, how many individuals were also charged with other sexual offences?
* Of the people who were charged with upskirting offences from 2019-2022 and were also charged with other sexual offences, please list the special sexual offences which they were also charged with
* Of the people who were charged with upskirting offences from 2019-2022, how many were under the age of 18?
* Of the people who reported that they have been a victim of upskirting since the 12th April 2019, how many have been under the age of 18? Please list their ages
* Of the people who reported that they had been a victim of upskirting since the 12th April 2019, how many were under the age of 10? Please list their ages
* Have you received any allegations of people who have experienced ‘down-blousing’ – photos taken down someone’s top without their consent. If so, how many people have made allegations about this?
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).
In order to locate and retrieve details for questions 1 and 10, we would need to conduct a manual review of in excess of 1000 records, estimating around 5 minutes for each record this would equate to over 83 hours and would exceed the FOI time limit.
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 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.