25^th February 2010

Dear Mr Walker,

FOI Reference No: FOI- 20091/98873

Thank you for your request for information received by West Yorkshire Police on 27^th October 2009.

You requested the following information:

1) How many homophobic hate crimes have been committed in 2009 to date?

2) How many homophobic hate crimes have been reported for each year for the past five years in West Yorkshire?

3) How many homophobic hate crimes have been reported this year and for the past five years in the Huddersfield area?

4) How many people have been sentenced for homophobic hate crimes in West Yorkshire each year over the past three years?

Clarification Received 10^th November 2009

I would like to know the number of homophobic hate 'incidents' and the number of homophobic hate 'crimes' as two seperate statistics.

Clarification Receive 16^th December 2009

Could you please give me information for 'hate incidents', including those deemed to be crimes
(basically, just hate incidents and crimes grouped together as one number.)

Unfortunately, West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide you with the information requested.

It is estimated that the cost of locating the information you seek within your request would exceed the time threshold. Where a reasonable estimate has been made that the appropriate limit would be exceeded, there is no requirement for a public authority to undertake the work up to the limit.

If you would like to refine or narrow the scope of your request, West Yorkshire Police will assist you in negotiating the possibility of the provision of some of the information requested.

Please see Appendix A for the full legislative explanation as to why West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide the information, specifically please see Section 16 Advice and assistance.

Please accept our apologies of the delay in dealing with your request. This is due to the large volume of Freedom of Information requests currently being dealt with by West Yorkshire Police.

COMPLAINT RIGHTS

If you are not satisfied with how this request has been handled or with the information provided, please read the advice notice attached to this letter. If you do wish to take up your right of complaint, please remember to quote the reference number above in any future correspondence.

Yours sincerely

Bronwen Salmon

Freedom of Information Support Officer

Steven Harding

Head of Information Management

The West Yorkshire Police in complying with their statutory duty under sections 1 and 11 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to release the enclosed information will not breach the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. However, the rights of the copyright owner of the enclosed information will continue to be protected by law. Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of the attached information should be addressed to The Force Solicitor, West Yorkshire Police Headquarters, PO Box 9, Laburnum Road, Wakefield WF1 3QP.

Appendix A

FOI Reference No: FOI- 20091/98873

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 creates a statutory right of access to information held by public authorities. A public authority in receipt of a request must, if permitted, state under Section 1(a) of the Act, whether it holds the requested information and, if held, then communicate that information to the applicant under Section 1(b) of the Act.

The right of access to information is not without exception and is subject to a number of exemptions which are designed to enable public authorities to withhold information that is unsuitable for release. Importantly the Act is designed to place information into the public domain, that is, once access to information is granted to one person under the Act, it is then considered public information and must be communicated to any individual should a request be received.

DECISION

Your request for information has been considered and I regret to inform you that West Yorkshire Police cannot comply. This letter serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 17 of the Act provides:

(1) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is to any extent relying on a claim that information is exempt information must, within the time for complying with Section 1(1), give the applicant a notice which:-

(a) states the fact,

(b) specifies the exemption in question, and

(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

REASONS FOR DECISION

The reason that we are unable to provide you with this information is covered by the following exemption(s):

Section 12 - Where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit

West Yorkshire Police can confirm that we hold the information you seek, however it is not held in an easily retrievable format.

It has been estimated that to obtain the information required to answer your request would exceed the 18 hour time threshold as specified under the Act. The information you are seeking is centrally held on the Police National Computer (PNC); however there are no facilities to search convictions for a given period. The only way to achieve this would be to search for all convictions on a separate system and then look up each case on PNC. Many of these incidents will not be specifically homophobic so will rely on a `hate related incident' flag on the system being present and then a subsequent check of the custody/crime record to identify the homophobic offences. Further to this the time period you have requested would include data from old systems which would not have the `hate related incident' flag. To look through the records as mentioned above for just one year would exceed the cost threshold. For example for 2008 there are a total of 697 records where a charge was given that was linked to a hate incident, which would all require checking. With an average of 2 minutes per record It has been calculated that it would take around 23 hours to obtain just one years of data, however this data would still not be complete as some of these records may be pending trial or sourced from old systems (therefore not necessarily relevant)

It has been estimated that the cost of providing you with this 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, which currently stands at £450 worth of work.

Our ACPO guidance states that we do not issue fees notices and therefore in accordance with the

Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

West Yorkshire Police have utilised Section 12, which states “A public authority does not have to comply with a request for information if the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit”, this is further affirmed by the Decision Notice issued by the Information Commissioner's Office (Reference: FS50143930), and Guidance issued by the Information Commissioner's Office on Using the Fees Regulations.

ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE

Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to persons who have made request for information please be advised that West Yorkshire Police can offer the following advice as to how to refine your request:

It has been estimated that questions 1, 2 and 3 can be answered within the 18 hour limit and a partial response may be given for question 4. However as detailed above even if we did provide this the information supplied would be inaccurate and therefore unfortunately we are not in a position to provide you with advice and assistance for question 4 of your request.

Please note that police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.