May 16, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Wildlife and Animal Welfare
Request Number: FOI/14487
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Wildlife
Subject: Dog Injuries
Request and Answer:
Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) We can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold the information you have requested however it is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We have explained to you below that when PSNI estimates whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if certain conditions are met. In this case those conditions are met and complying with all of your requests would in our estimation exceed that appropriate limit set out in Regulation.
We have explained this further below but also we followed the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance ‘Requests where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit’ in relation to this request, which also provides further detail on the application of Section 12 (1) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
Request 1
The number of offences of out-of-control dogs causing injury to a person in the last three years (Between April 6th and April 5th 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25).
Broken down by
a) year,
b) number of offences,
c) breed of dog,
d) severity of injury and
e) police outcome.
Request 2
The number of dogs seized in the last three years, broken down by
a) year,
b) by breed and
c) by reason for seizure.
Request 3
The number of dogs destroyed in the last three years - broken down by
a) year,
b) by breed and
c) reason for destruction.
Answers
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when refusing to provide such information (because the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit) to provide you the applicant with a notice which states that fact.
It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 12 of FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case.
The ‘appropriate limit’ is currently £600 for central government and £450 for all other public authorities including PSNI. The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity.
Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations states that a public authority can take into account the costs it reasonably expects to incur in carrying out the following permitted activities in complying with the request:
(i) determining whether the information is held;
(ii) locating the information, or a document containing it;
(iii) retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
(iv) extracting the information from a document containing it.
Under those regulations PSNI can calculate the time spent on each of these permitted activities at
£25 per hour (thus if the activity(s) takes more than 18 hours PSNI will be in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’).
When a public authority is estimating whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if the conditions laid out in Regulation 5 of the Fees Regulations can be satisfied. Those conditions require the requests to be:
- made by one person, or by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign;
- made for the same or similar information; and
- received by the public authority within any period of 60 consecutive working days.
Regulation 5(2) of the Fees Regulations requires that the requests which are to be aggregated relate “to any extent” to the same or similar information. This is quite a wide test but public authorities should still ensure that the requests meet this requirement.
Enquiries made in relation to your request has identified that retrieval of information to respond to your request would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours as set by the Secretary of State. It is enquiries in relation to request 1 that has resulted in your request being deemed as an over cost as the information you have requested here is not held in a format where the data is readily available or retrievable. The relevant record holder has advised that their IT systems cannot be used in such a way as to search for specific incidents where an out of control dog caused an injury to a person and can only be searched for incidents that merely involved dogs. To identify which ones for the time period you have specified that involved a dog that caused an injury to a person would require a manual examination of all incidents to extract which ones would satisfy your request. The relevant record holder has also advised that around 2000 potentially relevant incidents are input on their system each day which would all require manual examination in order to satisfy your request. Therefore, for this reason your request would be considered to be excessively in breach of the FOI legislative costs of 18 hours.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter should be considered as a Refusal Notice, and the request has therefore been closed.
Advice and assistance
You may wish to submit a refined request in order that the cost of complying with your request may be facilitated within the ‘appropriate limit’. In compliance with Section 16 of the Act, we have considered how your request may be refined to bring it under the appropriate limit and the only refinement we believe can be offered is the data for all dog incidents for your requested time period as it is more easily retrievable. However, please note we still would not be in a position to provide details concerning dog breeds and police outcomes for these types of incidents.
Police officers are not required to make determinations of dog breeds and the only data that would be held here would be remarks from relevant parties about the dog breed and police would not be confident as to the accuracy of this information.
Regarding police outcomes we can also advise that police are not the appropriate authority to investigate these incidents and these investigations would normally be progressed by Dog Wardens.
Requests 2 & 3:
Regarding these requests we can advise that police are not the appropriate authority that would handle dog seizures and destruction of dangerous dogs as these are for Council Dog Wardens to enforce under the Dogs (NI) Order. Therefore, we would recommend that you direct these aspects of your request to the relevant district councils.
Please note that there might be rare occasions where police would be involved in dog seizures and dog destructions but these would only be in circumstances where public safety concerns would dictate that it would be appropriate to do so, in normal circumstances these are for Council Dog Wardens to enforce.
Submission of a refined request would be treated as a new request, and considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including consideration of relevant Part II exemptions.