Domestic Abuse

Request Number: FOI/16047

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Violence against Women and Girls

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:
ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/guide-to-managing-an-foi-request/charging-a-fee-and-cost-limits/

Request Details
This request concerns all domestic-abuse-flagged incidents and crimes recorded by PSNI, regardless of the sex of the victim or offender. Please do not restrict results to the Violence Against Women and Girls framework.

Part 1
Please provide, for each calendar year 2019–2024 (inclusive)

Request 1
Domestic-abuse incidents, by victim sex and offender sex.

Request 2
Domestic-abuse crimes (notifiable offences), by the same variables.

Request 3
Repeat victims (two or more crimes in year), by victim sex.

Request 4
Domestic-abuse incidents not recorded as crimes, by victim sex.

Request 5
Any available “vulnerability flag” data (mental-health, disability, neurodiversity), totals by sex.

Column headings requested
Year | Victim Sex | Offender Sex | Incidents | Crimes | Repeat Victims | Non Crimed Incidents | Vulnerability Flagged.

Part 2
Please provide the following for the time period 2018–2024

Request 6
The number of domestic-abuse-related incidents in 2023 that were not recorded as crimes, broken down by victim sex.

Request 7
Any internal audit reports or reviews from 2018 onward assessing the accuracy of domestic-abuse crime recording or classification.

Request 8
Copies of current training materials or guidance for officers on distinguishing between “domestic incident” and “domestic-abuse crime.”

Please supply statistical data in Excel or CSV format, and documents as PDFs.

Answer
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.

Whilst the information you seek in Requests 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 is held electronically by the PSNI, it is not held in a format that would allow its retrieval without manual intervention. PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however to extract the data you have sought in your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records – hence putting the request grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA.

To retrieve the 1, 4 and 6 broken down by victim or offender sex would require a manual trawl of all domestic abuse incidents. There were over 79,000 incidents, where no crime was recorded, within this time period. Even at a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record review, it would take in excess of 2633 hours to retrieve the data sought in these requests.

Additionally, for request 3, a manual review of all domestic incidents records, where 1 or more domestic abuse crimes were recorded, would have to be completed to establish if there were any repeat victims. There were over 82,000 domestic incidents, where 1 or more domestic abuse crimes were recorded, within this time period. Even at a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record review, it would take in excess of 2733 hours to retrieve the data sought in this request alone.

Finally, for request 5, to retrieve the ‘vulnerability flag’ data broken down by sex would require a manual review of all domestic abuse incidents records. There are over 161,000 relevant incident records which would require a review and at an estimate of 2 minutes per record review, it would take in excess of 5,366 to answer this request alone.

Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, if any part of the request exceeds the cost threshold then the whole request will be in excess of costs and there is no obligation to answer any part of the request. 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.

Unfortunately, due the way in which we hold the information for Requests 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6, we are unable to suggest a refinement that would bring this request under the appropriate limit.

We can advise we may be able to provide a response to 7 and 8, however, 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.

To assist with answering Request 2, please follow the link below to our Domestic Abuse Statistics page. Financial year figures are published in both the annual ‘Trends in Domestic Abuse Incidents and Crimes’ and the quarterly ‘Domestic Abuse Incidents and Crimes update’ bulletins. Figures by victim gender and offender gender are available in the spreadsheets which accompany these bulletins. Monthly figures for the most recent five financial years are available in the quarterly bulletins and for the full time series in the Trends bulletin. The Trends bulletin currently covers up to March 2024. The next publication in this series will be published in November 2025 and will cover up to March 2025. The quarterly updates currently cover up to June 2025.

Please note that all domestic abuse crimes take part within a domestic abuse incident.  A domestic incident is any incident where there is a domestic motivation, regardless of whether what took place reached the threshold for a crime to be recorded:

https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/domestic-abuse-statistics