Wednesday, 01 April 2009

Dear Ms Dunckley,

FOI Reference No: FOI-20091/75503

I write in connection with your request for information dated 25 Feb 2009 and listed below. Your

request for information has now been considered and it is not possible to meet your requirements in

full. Instead I enclose a partial response to your request for information. You asked for:

I am contacting you concerning the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, as amended, legislation.

1) How many dogs have been seized by West Yorkshire police under Section One of the Dangerous Dogs Act in each year from 2000 to 2008?

2) How many prosecutions under Section One and Section Three of the Dangerous Dogs Act did the West Yorkshire police proceed with in 2007 and 2008?

3)How many dogs have been seized under Section One of the Dangerous Dogs Act so far this year (2009)? Of those seized, how many have been signed over for destruction by their owners?

4) How many applications have been made to the magistrates court under section 4b of the Dangerous Dogs Act in the last three years? Of those 4b applications, how many resulted in destruction orders
and how many resulted in registration onto the Index of Exempted Dogs?

5) How many dogs are currently held by you under Section One and Section Three of the Dangerous Dogs Act?

6) What number of dogs seized under Section One of the Dangerous Dogs Act over the last three years, have been destroyed or have died whilst in police custody, due to illness, injury or disease?

West Yorkshire Police can only provide the following information in relation to your questions above:-

Q1. West Yorkshire Police seized 65 dangerous dogs during 2008 under Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997. See below over costs answer for other years that you have asked for.

Q2. West Yorkshire Police does not hold data on prosecutions, however we can provide you with the number of people charged for offences under this Act, but please bear in mind that this too is limited data in that we can only provide that which has been recorded on Niche RMS our crime information system over the last 2 years, our legacy data does not contain the actual offence title, so we are unable to obtain data for previous years. The data we can provide is as follows:-

Charged Persons made under Section 1

2007 - 1

2008 - 2

Charged Persons made under Section 3

2007 - 11

2008 - 12

Q3. West Yorkshire Police have seized 2 dogs during 2009 under Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997 and of these one has been signed over for destruction, whilst the second case is still on-going. See below over costs answer for other years that you have asked for.

Q4. See below over costs answer.

Q5. Dogs currently held under Section 1 of the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997 is 4.

Dogs currently held under Section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997 is 5.

Q6. See below over costs answer.

Your request for all other information that you have asked for has now been considered and I regret to inform you that I cannot supply the information you have requested.

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires West Yorkshire Police, when refusing to

provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you, the applicant, with 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;

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

I can confirm that we do hold this information but unfortunately it is not in an easily retrievable format.

To obtain the information you seek would entail a manual check of each record held for 2005-2006 as well as archived records held for years 2000 to 2005, in order to establish a full answer to Question 1. In addition we would also need to consult with every officer in the case for each offence recorded in order to establish results for Questions 3, 4 and 6. 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.

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

Police forces providing information do not use generic systems, nor are the procedures used for capturing the data the same. It should be noted that for these reasons this forces response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

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

Janette Mitchell

Freedom of Information Project Officer

pp

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.