Dear Sir or Madam,

The idea of Licensing Premises should be that they can be monitored
and if they are detrimental they can have their license terms
amended or revoked. Therefore good information is extremely
important to this democratic process.

Earlsdon appears to be having more people come to drink here, and
has in the last year made national headlines with football
violence. There is some concern within the community surrounding
alcohol related issues.

I do not know what information you record. However, I would like to
have some crime statistics related to incidents in or related to
public houses in Earlsdon Ward by month for the latest 12 months
you have on record.

Questions that I am requesting a response to are:

How many times the police were called out?

How many arrests were made?

How many cautions?

How many on the spot fines?

How many prosecutions?

I would like to see a matrix by public house by month.

I will be planning to publicise this material.

Yours faithfully,

Ed Manning.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Just a reminder that I am awaiting an update, which was due on 3
October.

I understand that you may need some time to get the information
together, however I would expect a progress report which is now
beyond the legal time frame.

Please can you update this as soon as possible.

Many thanks,

Yours sincerely,

Ed Manning

Dear Mr Manning
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Your request for information, received 08 September 2008 concerning crime in public houses in Earlsdon has now been considered.

The FOI Act obliges us to respond to requests promptly and in any case no later than 20 working days after receiving your request. We must consider firstly whether we can comply with section 1(1) (a) of the Act, which is our duty to confirm whether or not the information requested is held and secondly we must comply with section 1(1)(b), which is the provision of such information.

However, when a qualified exemption applies either to the confirmation or denial, or the provision of the information and the public interest test is engaged, the Act allows the time for response to be longer than 20 working days, if the balance of such public interest is undetermined. In this case we have not yet reached a decision on where the balance of the public interest lies in respect of the provision of the requested information, this is due to the small number of data.

We estimate that it will take an additional 20 working days to make a decision on where this balance lies. Therefore, we plan to let you have a response by 06 November 2008. If it appears that it will take longer than this to reach a conclusion, you will be kept informed. The specific exemption(s) which apply in relation this information are section 30 (investigations) and section 40 (personal data).

Your attention is drawn to your right to request a re-examination of your case under West Midlands Police review procedure (attached). Please note that such an appeal must be received within six months of the date of this correspondence.

I apologise for any inconvenience. We aim to provide you with a meaningful response as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Unit

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Dear Mr Manning
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Further to your email, received 08 September 2008 concerning crime in public houses in the Earlsdon area of Coventry, unfortunately, it has not been possible to meet your requirements in full. Information has either been excluded in full or redacted. Instead, I enclose a partial response to your request.

Please note that these data are the closest we hold to your request. They should not be interpreted as representing anything other than as described in this response.

The attached document 1691_ans_01 provides 3 tables with data for the period 01 April 2007 to 31 August 2008 as at 03 October 2008. Table 1 provides West Midlands Police count of recorded offences, table 2 shows the number of arrests and table 3 shows the count of detected offences.

Please note that the information provided is where the location description is shown as public house.

No attempt should be made to compare recorded and detected crime within the same year. The date of recorded offences is the date on which they are entered onto West Midlands Police systems. The date of detected offences is the date on which an individual or individuals have been arrested for the offence. Therefore offences may be detected in a later year than they are recorded, meaning that direct comparison of recorded and detected crime within the same period will give spurious results.

Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large disparate administrative data systems used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

Your attention is drawn to your right to request a re-examination of your case under West Midlands Police review procedure (attached). Please note that such an appeal must be received within six months of the date of this correspondence.

If you require any further information, then please contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Unit

West Midlands 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 Midlands Police Headquarters, Lloyd House, Colmore Circus Queensway, Birmingham, B4 6NQ.

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