FOI.23.004377.T - Dog Attacks and Seizures

Request

Under Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information:

• Dog attacks by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.

• Dog seizures by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.

• Reports/calls of dangerous dogs from the public that resulted in seizure / action by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.

• Reports/calls of dangerous dogs from the public that did not result in seizure / action by year since 2015 including; non-reported breeds, suspected breeds and confirmed breeds.

• Confirmation that trained dog handlers attended any call out to dogs. If not, the reasons as to why and the result of the call out.

• The number of trained dog handlers in your force.

The Freedom of Information Act requires that this request is dealt with in a manner that is motive and applicant blind. A disclosure under this legislation is considered a disclosure to the world and is considered to be on the basis that it is in the public interest.

This response is unique to Humberside Police, and you are advised not to compare this like for like with any other force’s response you receive.

Response

Please accept our apologies for the delay in providing you with a response, thank you for your patience.

Following liaison with the Dog Legislation Officer, the following information can be disclosed:

Q1, 3 & 4

It has been advised that it is not possible to retrieve any part of your request within the ‘appropriate limit’ (18 – hours). This is because the information that you are requesting is not stored in a way which permits easy retrieval and would require manual searching through each individual record. Therefore, S12 of the act applies.

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit. s1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the
authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ (18 – hours).

Activities that may be counted within our time estimations are:
• Determining if the information is held;
• Locating the information, or a document containing it;
• Retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
• Extracting the information from a document containing it.

The following have not been included within our calculations:
• The time spent identifying information to be exempted
• The time dedicated to the process of redaction.

Please take this as a refusal notice in accordance with section 17(5) of the Act which states; A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

Although excess cost removes the forces obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, 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.

Q2) Seizures

Please note that we do not hold data pre-2018 and we do not routinely record the breed of
dogs.

Section 1 Seizures
2018: 38
2019: 70
2020: 39
2021: 31
2022: 43
2023: 20 (Up until July)

Section 3 Seizures
2018: 13
2019: 43
2020: 38
2021: 38
2022: 45
2023: 20 (Up until July)

Q5)

For the purpose of answering this question, Humberside Police wish to clarify that the term
‘Dog Handler’ refers to officers who carry out duties with a General Patrol dog and/or
specialist dog (such as one to detect drugs/cash weapons).

Trained Police dog handlers do not deal with dangerous dogs in Humberside, it is down to
the dog screeners and 1 full time Dog Legislation Officer.

Q6)

We currently have 13 Police dog handlers.

Please note that police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide information and statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force’s response to your questions should not be used for the comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

If you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or 01482 578662.

Information Governance Unit Humberside Police

You can view our complaints procedure here.