Thank you for your e-mail requesting information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 / Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

We will proceed with the request which we received today. It is our
intention to have the information delivered to you as soon as possible
otherwise within the statutory 20 working days.

In consideration of the request, which may be subject to any exemptions/
exceptions the Council may rely on to refuse the request, some of which
are absolute and some of which only apply where the public interest in
maintaining the exemption/exception outweighs that in disclosing the
information.

Please note that should you be requesting information under the
Environmental Information Regulations although we provide free access to a
wide range of information through our website, access to any public
registers which we hold and for inspecting information at our offices, we
are allowed to charge you a reasonable fee for providing certain
information.  If applicable, we will issue you with a fee notice.  This
will detail the tasks involved in responding to the request, and
associated costs.  Further information is available on the EIR page of
Bedford Borough Council’s website at the following link:

[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...

Please note that once a response has been forwarded to you an anonymised
summary of all requests appear on the Bedford Borough website at the
following link:

[2]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Our current practise is that the information will be available to view on
the web for 2 years.

Any future correspondence you may have with the Council in relation to
this matter should be emailed to [3][Bedford Borough Council request email] .

Any emails containing personal or sensitive data will be sent as ‘secure
e-mails’.  In order for you to access a secure email you will be asked to
create an account and log into the Council’s secure e-mail reply service. 
If you do receive a secure email there will be instructions explaining how
to do this.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
2. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
3. mailto:[Bedford Borough Council request email]

Bedford BC - OFFICIAL-Unsecure

Dear Andy Buckwell

Request pursuant to Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request No 13830

I refer to your recent enquiry for information held by the Council. 

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, the authority must
state whether or not the information exists and I confirm that we do hold
part of the information you requested.

Please find the information you requested enclosed. 

You requested:

Can you provide answers to the following questions for each year from 2013
to the present:

·                   How many knives or similar offensive weapons have been
seized in your schools in each year from 2013 to present?

In your answer can you please provide figures for secondary schools and
primary schools separately.

·                   Can you also specify whether the knife was found to be
in the possession of a boy or girl and their age, or neither (i.e.
discarded on school premises).

·                   How many injuries have been caused by knives or
similar offensive weapons in secondary schools and primary schools in the
same period. Can you specify the age of the victim and whether a pupil or
a teacher, or visitor to the school.

·                   In how many of these has the victim required hospital
treatment. Can you specify the age of the victim and whether a pupil or a
teacher, or visitor to the school.

·                   How many times have police been called to schools to
deal with incidents involving pupil behaviour in each year from 2013 to
present?

Response:  We do not hold/record this information.   You may wish to
contact the police and or individual schools for this information.

·         How many pupils have been excluded for possession or use of a
knife on school premises in each year from 2013 to present?

Response:

Other Reason Academic Year
2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 to date
Knife 7 * 11 * 6

Please note this analysis is based on permanent exclusion figures as
reported by Schools directly to the Council; and the specific nature of
the exclusion is based on details of the exclusion as known to the LA.

Suppression has been applied to figures of 5 and under.*

Data for 2013-14 academic year is not readily available and 2018-19 data
is as at 28^th February 2019.

*Pursuant to Section 17 (1) of the Act the Council

1.         States that this is exempt information.

2.         Specifies, that the exemption in question is the subject of an
absolute exemption contained within Section 40 (Personal Information) of
the FOI Act (FOIA).

An explanation follows below.

We are unable to provide the exact figure (fewer than 6) or any further
information due to low numbers in the cohort and the possibility of a
child/young person being identifiable.

The DfE do not have a category for knives or weapons, so they are all
recorded under the category of ‘other’. ‘Other’ is sometimes also used by
schools to record other exclusions that they don’t feel fit into the other
11 categories the DfE provide.

As a result it would not be possible to guarantee the accuracy of the data
without manually checking each exclusion letter to clarify the reason for
the exclusion, and establish whether it was indeed a knife or similar
weapon. For the requested timeframe this would be particularly onerous in
the case of fixed term exclusions, and exceed the “appropriate limit” for
FOI.  The Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not oblige the Council to
comply with a request for information if it estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit.”

This appropriate limit has been set in the Freedom of Information and Data
Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 which provides
that for a local authority the appropriate limit is £450. This is
calculated by reference to a maximum of 18 hours being taken and the cost
of staff time being set in the Regulations as £25 per hour.  The
Regulations also say that In calculating the amount the Council may, “for
the purpose of its estimate, take account only of the costs it reasonably
expects to incur in relation to the request in: (a) determining whether it
holds the information, (b) locating the information, or a document which
may contain the information, (c) retrieving the information, or a document
which may contain the information, and (d) extracting the information from
a document containing it.”

The Council has therefore decided to refuse your request.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.  For
further information regarding Re-use of Public Sector information please
see link below.

If after viewing the information you are for whatever reason unhappy with
our response to your application you are entitled to pursue any
dissatisfaction through the Council's Internal Review Procedure.  Pursuant
to Section 17 (7) of the Act the procedure provided by the Council for
dealing with complaints about the determination of this request for
information is the Council’s FOI Complaints Procedure, a copy of which can
be obtained on request or is set out at: 
[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...

Yours sincerely

Daniela Hanson
Freedom of Information Administrator (Children's Services)
Support Services
Children's Services
Bedford Borough Council, Borough Hall, Cauldwell Street, Bedford, MK42 9AP
Tel: 01234 276749 (Internal 44749)
Website: [2]www.bedford.gov.uk  
‘Bedford Borough Council – Working with our partners to make the Borough a
better place to live, work and visit.’

For up-to-date information on the Council follow us on:
Twitter: @bedfordtweets  
Facebook: [3]https://www.facebook.com/bedfordboroughc...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Colin Foster, Director of Children’s Services
Borough Hall, Cauldwell Street, Bedford MK42 9AP DX 117105 Bedford 4

Phone (01234) 267422   Minicom (01234) 221827   Web www.bedford.gov.uk

Information security classification of this email: OFFICIAL-Unsecure

EMAIL CLASSIFICATION DEFINED:

*** OFFICIAL-INTERNAL: This message is intended for internal recipients
only.

*** OFFICIAL-UNSECURE:  This message and any attached file(s) do not
contain personal or sensitive information which requires it to be sent
encrypted.

*** OFFICIAL-SECURE: Either this message or any attached file contains
either personal or commercially sensitive information that requires it to
be sent encrypted.

All email traffic may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in
accordance with relevant legislation. This email and any attached file are
the property of Bedford Borough Council. Any opinions expressed in this
mail do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Bedford Borough Council.

Bedford Borough Council is continuously working towards the requirements
of the Public Sector Network and Data Protection legislation.  Data
Subjects may exercise their information rights by contacting
[email address].

References

Visible links
1. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
2. http://www.bedford.gov.uk/
3. https://www.facebook.com/bedfordboroughc...