Firearms & Shotgun Licence

Please disclose the number of persons who have been granted either a Firearms licence or Shotgun certificate under the Firearms Act 1968, who have been previously convicted of any criminal offence before there application was made, between the years 1990 and 2010.

Please could you disclose the number of persons who hold a firearms licence or a shotgun certificate who have been convicted of any criminal offence and still hold either a shotgun certificate or firearms licence under the Firearms Act 1968, between the years 1990 and 2010.

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

From our preliminary assessment, we estimate that compliance with your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of information Act 2000. This is currently £450. There are approximately 14,000 manual files relating to the holders of firearm and shotgun certificates. To locate and retrieve the information to answer your request would take in excess of a 1000 man hours to achieve at a cost of nearly £30,000 and clearly exceeds the cost limits.

We are unable to offer a solution to your request that would produce meaningful information within the cost limits. As this request is estimated to exceed the appropriate limit as 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. 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.