Tuesday 7th April 2009

Dear Mr Charlesworth,

FOI Reference No: FOI-20092/77766

I write in connection with your Freedom of Information request dated 6th March 2009. Your request 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:

Please could you furnish me with how many calls in total were submitted to 999 and also 0845 6060606 where the call requested an immediate police response, and how many of those calls resulted in a unit being despatched immediately.

I do not require any monthly breakdowns or crime type, just total annual figures.

Please break these figures down as follows:

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2001

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2002

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2003

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2004

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2005

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2006

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2007

Total 0845 6060606 / 999 calls received in 2008

*Please be advised that the data in relation to 0845 calls between June and September 2008 is not wholly accurate as the call system was being upgraded over this period and it is believed that not all calls were captured in the data.

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2001

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2002

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2003

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2004

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2005

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2006

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2007

Total number of calls where police were despatched following a 0845
6060606 / 999 call in 2008

In relation to the number of 0845 calls which received an immediate/emergency response, I regret to inform you that West Yorkshire Police cannot supply the information 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 cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.

I can confirm that we do hold this information but unfortunately this specific data is not collated centrally or held in an easily retrievable format. To obtain the information you seek would entail a manual check of all incident logs to ascertain their origin. Some similar data is recorded centrally in relation to immediate/emergency dispatch for a category termed `Other calls' which includes call types other than 999 calls. This category would include 0845 calls along with calls to helpdesks and neighbourhood policing teams but could not be broken down any further. In addition, this system does not hold data covering the whole of your request period. Extraction from this system is a very time consuming process and it has been estimated that it would take 5 to 6 weeks to extract the data for a one year period. Therefore, it has been estimated that the cost of providing you with the information requested or similar 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 or 18 hours 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 could you also prove details of how many crimes were recorded in total in West Yorkshire for each requested year?

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your request. This is due to the large volume of requests 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

Claire Vickers-Pearson

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.