2022/25420 - CSV files where Gwent have called in SWP

REQUEST

I would like to be supplied with a CSV file for use in Excel to be able to plot road cases where Gwent Police have called in the services of South Wales Fire Services due to Accidents in Caerphilly Borough area for calendar years 2018 - 2021 inclusive. The Dataset should include Longitude & Latitude, Accident Reference number, Accident Date, Time & approximate length of closure of named road.

RESPONSE

There is no filter to identify the above request. In order to find this information, a manual trawl would have to be completed on each offence within this time period which were categorised as Transport, Road Traffic Collision. There are 5,581 such incidents recorded from 2018 - 2021.  In order to retrieve the data, each record would need to be reviewed. It would take approximately ten minutes to review each individual record, which would equate to 930 hours of research. Therefore, a Section 12 Excess Cost exemption has been applied.

Section 12 – Excess Cost

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

Section 12(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.” 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.