FOI 9780-25 Speeding Fines & Agricultural Vehicles
Request to Northamptonshire Police:
The number of successful prosecutions secured for exceeding the speed limit on the roads with reference specifically to TRACTORS and/or agricultural vehicles (as opposed to any other vehicle type)
Please provide tractor/agricultural vehicle speeding prosecution figures for 2022-23, 2023-2024, 2025 so far.
Can you please identify the HIGHEST illegal tractor/agricultural vehicle speed (in mph) recorded by the force, and what the speed limit of the road was at the time of the offence
If possible, please provide details of the ultimate prosecution (fine, points on licence, etc) for the individual who recorded the highest speed while driving a tractor/agricultural vehicle.
Response:
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom Of Information responses.
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The exemption applicable to the information requested is:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
The information you are requesting is not held by Northamptonshire Police in any reasonably retrievable form. The only means of establishing information of the nature you are requesting would be by way of manual examination of each record to see if it was an agricultural vehicle. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information.
It is my assessment that the cost of providing you with the information requested would exceed the 'appropriate level' as set out in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
My assessment is that it would cost 219,510 (approximate number of records) x 2 minutes each (minimum) = over 7,317 hours at £25 per hour to respond to your request, which exceeds the 'appropriate limit' (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs').
In view of the above, and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please take this letter as a Refusal Notice.
You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the costs shown above and is then within the 'appropriate limit' shown above. (I cannot think of a means to refine the request in order to provide the information you are seeking) but if you would like some further information about how to proceed with your request then please contact:
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.