Firearm Certificates

1. How many firearms certificates issued by your police force are still active?
2. How many shotgun certificates issued by your police force are still active?
3. Of these active firearms certificates how many have been issued to people with criminal records?
4. Of these active shotgun certificates how many have been issued to people with criminal records?
5. Of the active firearms certificates how many have been issued to people aged 19 or younger?
6. Of the active firearms certificates how many have been issued to people aged under 16?
7. How old is the youngest holder of a firearms certificate issued by your force?
8. Of the active shotgun certificates how many have been issued to people aged 19 or younger?
9. Of the active shotgun certificates how many have been issued to people aged under 16?
10. How old is the youngest holder of a shotgun certificate issued by your force?

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. The NFLMS – the National Firearms Licensing Management System – does not hold conviction related data. To retrieve the data to answer your questions 3 & 4 would require a manual search of some 14,000 files. Such a search would probably take one member of staff approximately 18 days. This would clearly 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.

In order to assist you I can say that the majority of your questions have been asked before and the results are on our disclosure log. Please see the following web pages: Disclosure Log

In addition the Home Office publishes annual figures by force for the number of firearms/shotgun certificates granted, renewed and revoked - the most recent publication can be found at the following web page:  Home Office Website