Stalking Protection Orders
Date of request: 1 July 2023
Reference: 830-23
Request
I am writing to request information under Freedom of Information, relating to the use, by your Force, of Stalking Protection Orders.
In particular, I would be grateful if you could please provide the following information relating to the time period, 20 January 2020 to 31 March 2023:
- How many Stalking Protection Orders has your Force applied for?
- How many of those applications have been successful?
- What was the conduct that triggered the application for the Stalking Protection Order?
- What conditions were imposed by the Stalking Protection Orders, negative and positive?
- How many breaches of Stalking Protection Orders have taken please?
- Which conditions were imposed leading to breach?
- How many Stalking Protection Orders was your Force asked to apply for, by victims or by victims representatives?
Response
Q1. 10
Q2. 10
Q3 and Q4. The following table shows the conduct and conditions imposed by the Stalking Protection Order in the requested time frame. We have not aligned each order with the specific type of conduct, as to do so may risk inadvertently identifying the individuals involved.
| Conduct
|
Prohibitions/Requirements |
| Persistently contacting an ex-partner (both digital and in person)
|
|
| Following, watching, loitering and excessively contacting strangers/people not well known to them/acquaintances
|
|
| Surveillance activity |
|
Q5. We have identified 6 occurrences that have been recorded as ‘breach of stalking order/ interim stalking order’ in the requested time frame.
Q6. We do not hold this information. Individuals are prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) so they are best placed to answer this question. If you would like to address your question to CPS, requests can be made via email to IAT@cps.gov.uk or in writing to:
Information Access Team
Crown Prosecution Service
102 Petty France
London SW1H 9EA
Q7. We are not able to confirm whether Avon and Somerset Police holds the information you have requested. On this occasion the cost of determining whether we hold the information would exceed the limit set by the Freedom of Information Act, and as a result, we will not be taking your request further. In this letter I will explain why this is the case.
If a public authority estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to confirm whether or not the requested information is held then, under section 12(2) of the Act, it does not have to deal with the substance of the request.
At this time the limit is set at £450 or 18 staff hours work. 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.
An application for a Stalking Protection Order would always come from a police officer to the legal department. If a victim or victim’s representative has advised us that a Stalking Protection Order is sought this may or may not be recorded on our crime recording system. To identify whether any such information is held, we would be required to complete a manual review of all domestic abuse and stalking occurrences in the requested time frame. Likewise, a Stalking Protection Order may have been initially considered, however bail conditions or a different type of protection order may have been deemed more appropriate. To identify and extract any information held would also require us to complete a manual review of all domestic abuse and stalking occurrences in the requested time frame. Due to the high number of reports in the time frame this would take in excess of 18 hours to complete.
This letter represents a partial Refusal Notice under the Act.