FOI 1355-25 Dangerous Dog Attacks 2019 to 2025

Request to Northamptonshire Police

I am aiming to answer this question:

“How effective is the Dangerous Dog Act (1991) and Breed Specific Legislation, at reducing dog attacks leading to hospitalisation within the UK?”

I am requesting data for the below questions from all police forces within the UK, where possible:

Question 1 - Since 2019 how many dog attacks have been reported each year, and if possible, broken down into breeds?

Question 2 - How many dog on human attacks have, to your knowledge, resulted in hospitalisations each year since 2019?

Question 3 - How many reports of XL bully attacks since 2019, and have you noticed a decrease since the 1st February 2024?

Question 4 - Which dog breed carried out the most attacks each year since 2019?

Response

Question 1

We have been able to provide a total number of dog attacks since 2019 as detailed below: 

However, to break this down in specific breeds would engage an exemption under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as the estimated cost of complying with the request exceeds the appropriate limit of £450. We estimate that locating, retrieving, and processing the requested information would cost approximately £9122 due to the need to manually search 4379 records and retrieve information contained in:-

• Occurrence Summary
• Property Animal Breed
• Property Label Description
• Property Remarks
• Incident Description

We have not conducted a public interest test in this instance as Section 12 is an absolute exemption.

Question 2

Northamptonshire Police does not hold this information, as it is held by the NHS England, please redirect this question to them.

Question 3

We have conducted a search of multiple systems where ‘XL bully’ was involved, where a decrease in reports citing this breed is detailed in the table below:

Question 4

Northamptonshire Police are unable to answer this question, as it would engage an exemption under Section 12 of the freedom of Information Act 2000. As stated in our response to Question 1, we would need to manually retrieve data from 4379 records. Compliance with this question of the request would exceed the appropriate cost limit of £450.

Please note that this information was correct at the date of receipt of the request.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. 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 the data is used.

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason, responses between forces may differ and should not be used for comparative purposes.

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.