Using a Mobile Phone While Driving (529A/22)
Request
The number of people stopped, warned, or issued a fixed penalty notice for using a mobile phone while driving under the new law that took effect on the 25th of March between the period of 25th March 2022 to 31st March 2022 inclusive.
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, 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 as follows). 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:
CJS Offence Code: RV 86019 (effective 25th March 2022) – ‘Use a handheld mobile phone / device while driving a motor vehicle’ on a road to 31 March 2022 = 13 notices issued by West Midlands Police during this period.
REASON FOR DECISION
Although we have been able to provide the number of fixed penalty notices issued since the law change on 25th March 2022 (see above), information with regard to the number of motorists stopped or warned is not centrally collated.
Therefore, in order to determine this information, we would need to undertake a manual trawl of multiple force systems, all incident logs and all officers’ pocket notebooks. Such a search however would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12). It should also be noted that even if we were to conduct the search as described above, this may not give an accurate result, as the stop or warning may not have been recorded by the officer on every single occasion.
This means that 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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
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