Investigation of Sexual Assault and Rape

1 Do you have a specialist unit for investigating rape or serious sexual assault where the victims are adults?

2 How many detectives work in this unit?

3 Whether or not you have a specialist unit, how may STO's (specially trained officers) for adult rape and serious sexual assault offences do you have in your force?

4 If you do not have a specialist unit for investigating rape or serious sexual assault how many of the above officers are dedicated to primarily investigating such offences?

5 Do you have a policy setting out the highest or average acceptable yearly workload for any one STO investigating rape and serious sexual assault offences? If so what is it? Please break this answer down by rank - DC, DS, DI

6 During the last year what was the highest workload seen by any one of your STO's for rape and serious sexual assault offences? - ie how many cases were they managing at any one time? Please break this answer down by rank - DC, DS, DI

7 During the last year what was the AVERAGE workload for STO's investigating rape and serious sexual assault offences? Please break this answer down by rank - DC, DS, DI

In accordance with section 1(1) (b) of the Act our response is provided below;

I understand that one of our Detective sergeants has been in touch with you and explained the difficulties of supplying information for some parts of your request. The officer was however able to provide the following information:

Question 1. No

Question 2. N/A

Question 3. 133

Question 4. All the STO trained officers are primarily trained CID officers and work within a CID department. They are however the first officers called on to investigate such offences. The STO's are currently deployed from the CID on top of their usual work load.

Question 5. No

Questions 6 & 7. These are the questions that we are unable to answer within the FOI cost limit's. Because we do not have a dedicated unit and the questions

appertaining to the work load of STO's would mean having to search through all incident reports and each individual officers work to research the answers. This it is estimated would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004. Furthermore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned regulations.