Domestic Abuse

April 28, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Crime Statistics

Request Number: FOI/14216

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Victim

Subject: Domestic Abuse

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 and this will be further explained below. PSNI have 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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Requests 1- 9 
My request relates to domestic abuse.
ITV News would like to request the following information:
 

  1. The number of domestic violence prevention notices issued in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  2. The number of domestic violence protection orders granted in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  3. The number of non-molestation orders granted in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  4. The number of restraining orders granted in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  5. The number of forced marriage protection orders granted in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  6. The number of stalking protection orders granted in the last five years with yearly breakdown
  7. The number of breaches of each order in the last five years with yearly breakdown. Including DVPNs, DVPOs, non-molestation orders, restraining orders, SPOs and FMPOs and the result of that breach. Please state the gender of the defendant 
  8. The number of defendants who have breached an order multiple times and by how many times in the last five years. Please state the gender of the defendant 
  9. The number of people convicted of murder who were subject to a domestic abuse related order in the last five years. Please state the gender of the defendant
     

Answers 1-9
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.
The information requested is not held in a format that enables extraction without manually reviewing each incident. To provide gender identification for request 7, 3917 records would need to be manually reviewed. At a very conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record, this would take over 130 hours to provide gender identification for request 7 alone.

Additionally for request 8, 3917 records would need to be reviewed for defendants with multiple breaches listed and a table would need to be produced to display the name and Niche ID of each suspect per occurrence then a search for duplicates would need to be performed. At a very conservative estimate of 5 minutes per search this would equate to over 326 hours of work to provide an answer to request 8 alone.

Therefore based on the rationale outlined above, to answer your request would be significantly over cost.

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. 

  • Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) may be able to provide an answer to request 6 within cost.
  • Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) may be able to provide an answer to request 7 within cost but this will be unable to broken down by gender.
  • It should also be noted that Domestic Violence Protection Order (DVPO) or Domestic Abuse Protection Order) DAPO legislation is not currently in place in Northern Ireland so the answer to both requests 1 and 2 would be 0.
  • Requests 3, 4, 5 and 9 – This information to answer these requests is not held by PSNI and this information should be sought directly from NICTS- Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (Court Order).

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.