FOI 7214-25 Nitrous Oxide and Driving Offences
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information relating to the offence of driving without proper control of the vehicle (commonly associated with offence code CD10).
Please provide data for the last three calendar years: 2022, 2023 and 2024, with a monthly breakdown where possible.
Specifically, I would like to request the following:
Q1. The total number of cautions issued under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.
Q2. The total number of fixed penalties issued under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.
Q3. The total number of prosecutions initiated under the CD10 offence, broken down by month and year.
Q4. A full list or breakdown of all offences recorded under CD10 during this period.
Q5. Where available, any accompanying officer notes, incident descriptors, or free-text fields associated with CD10 offences.
Q6. If possible, please indicate whether any of the CD10 offences were related to driving with pets in the vehicle (e.g. where the presence or behaviour of a pet may have contributed to the lack of control). This could include any relevant details recorded in officer notes or free-text fields.
Q7. Please indicate the number of fines issued under the CD10 offence during each period and where held, the total revenue generated from these fines, broken down by each month of each calendar year.
Clarification
Further to my recent Freedom of Information request regarding the offence code CD10 – driving without due care and attention, I would like to provide the following clarifications to assist with processing:
Offence Scope
Please note that I am requesting information specifically and solely related to the CD10 offence code, which refers to driving without due care and attention.
Fixed Penalty Notices / Conditional Offers (Q2) If your force does not issue Fixed Penalty Notices but instead issues conditional offers (comprising a fine and points on the licence), please confirm this within your response and include these figures under Q2.
Prosecutions Initiated (Q3)
For Q3, I am seeking data on individuals who were referred for court prosecution under CD10, regardless of whether a conviction followed. If available, please also include a breakdown showing how many of those referrals resulted in conviction.
If only one of these figures is held, please provide what is available and indicate what the figure represents.
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:
- states that fact,
- specifies the exemption in question and
- states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption
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 establish if a pet may have contributed to the lack of control. 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 1,606 (approximate number of records) x 6 minutes each (minimum) = over 160 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.
Although excess cost removes the Force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relevant to your request, which was retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.
|
Q1 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Jan |
41 |
38 |
38 |
|
Feb |
41 |
45 |
37 |
|
Mar |
53 |
53 |
44 |
|
Apr |
46 |
41 |
50 |
|
May |
60 |
35 |
54 |
|
Jun |
89 |
53 |
48 |
|
Jul |
55 |
45 |
43 |
|
Aug |
38 |
55 |
46 |
|
Sep |
46 |
38 |
45 |
|
Oct |
44 |
38 |
41 |
|
Nov |
36 |
40 |
35 |
|
Dec |
28 |
23 |
44 |
|
Q2 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Jan |
3 |
4 |
3 |
|
Feb |
3 |
6 |
6 |
|
Mar |
5 |
8 |
4 |
|
Apr |
4 |
2 |
4 |
|
May |
6 |
6 |
2 |
|
Jun |
6 |
4 |
4 |
|
Jul |
5 |
3 |
3 |
|
Aug |
5 |
10 |
3 |
|
Sep |
5 |
4 |
1 |
|
Oct |
6 |
8 |
3 |
|
Nov |
4 |
4 |
1 |
|
Dec |
1 |
5 |
10 |
|
Q3 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Jan |
6 |
4 |
5 |
|
Feb |
9 |
4 |
4 |
|
Mar |
10 |
9 |
5 |
|
Apr |
4 |
5 |
2 |
|
May |
9 |
4 |
10 |
|
Jun |
12 |
11 |
6 |
|
Jul |
4 |
6 |
2 |
|
Aug |
8 |
5 |
8 |
|
Sep |
6 |
6 |
11 |
|
Oct |
5 |
6 |
6 |
|
Nov |
2 |
7 |
14 |
|
Dec |
3 |
2 |
7 |
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources 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 the 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 the data is 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.