E-Scooters

Response

Avon and Somerset Police holds information on the subject you have requested. However, we will not be able to answer your request without exceeding the appropriate cost limit. This is because the information is not centrally recorded and would involve an extensive search of our files to find and collate.  

 

Information relevant to your request is held in more than one place in our systems. Some records of seized e-scooters would be held by our Estates and Facilities team in relation to e-scooters that have been seized and taken to our garages. Additional information is held within our crime recording system, Niche, in relation to e-scooters taken to stations by officers and disposed of. While we would be able to retrieve some information relevant to your request, it would not be possible to retrieve all relevant information within the appropriate limit, as explained below. 

 

Within Niche, there is a field to record the vehicle type of seized vehicles. We would be able to provide data on the number of seized vehicles in each year for which this field has been completed and matches either ‘e-scooter’ or ‘electric scooter’. However, vehicle type is not a mandatory field, and further relevant information may be held within the body of records for vehicle seizures in which the specific data field has not been recorded. To identify all information within the scope of your request would therefore require a manual review of seized vehicle records for a 24-month timeframe. We estimate that this would take more than 18 hours to complete. 

 

Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate cost limit, which for police authorities is set at £450 or 18 staff hours. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting it.  

 

This serves as a refusal notice under section 17(1) of the FOI Act.  

 

If you would like to refine your request, we may be able to supply you with some information that may be of use. ICO guidance confirms that organisations have an obligation to provide data within the scope of a request even if it is inaccurate.  

 

In line with this guidance, we would be able to confirm the number of e-scooters recorded as seized:  

 

1 – by our Estates and Facilities team  

2 – within the specific data field for seized vehicles within our crime recording system As explained, this data would not be reflective of the true number of e-scooters seized in this period.