CCTV Evidence

How many offences were detected where CCTV evidence was recorded as the primary detection factor in the performance years 2009/2010 and 2010/2011?

Please provide a breakdown of each crime classification containing the total numbers of crime recorded, total detected and those recorded as being detected by CCTV evidence for each year 2009/10 and 2010/2011.

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

I can confirm that the Cheshire Constabulary holds the information requested.

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 basis for this calculation is the cost of retrieving and extracting the information requested. In any one year there are approximately 20,000 detected crimes. To ascertain how many were detected primarily through CCTV would require a manual search of each crime file. This it is estimated would take one person about four months to achieve. This is the same also for the breakdown in the second part of your request. This would exceed the appropriate limit and your request is therefore refused.

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Cheshire Constabulary, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you with a notice which a) states that fact, b) specifies the exemption in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

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.

Our CCTV and visual identification unit have said that we do have information available for the number of crimes detected where one of our CCTV officers dealt with the CCTV footage or our Visual ID Unit worked on identifying the suspect, but not all CCTV evidence goes through those units.