April 28, 2025 | Roads Policing and Safety Cameras , Road Traffic Collisions
Request Number: FOI/14427
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Road Traffic Collision
Subject: Road Collisions 24/25
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
In the past year, how many car accidents took place? (Financial year 2024/25)
Request 2
Can this be broken down by accident causes such as speeding, drink-driving, icy roads etc?
Request 3
Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
Request 4
What is the number of pedestrian casualties in reported road collisions in the past year?(Financial year 2024/25)
Request 5
Could these casualties be broken down into fatalities, serious injuries and minor injuries?
Request 6
Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
Request 7
What is the number of pedal cyclist casualties in reported road collisions in the past year? (Financial year 2024/25)
Request 8
Could these casualties be broken down into fatalities, serious injuries and minor injuries?
Request 9
Can this be broken down by town (accidents in the towns that the force covers)?
Request 10
In the past year, how many people were arrested following a traffic collision/accident and how many people were subsequently charged? (Financial year 2024/25)
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.
PSNI hold data for ‘damage only’ this is not held centrally and if held is scattered across a number of databases including within the 11 PSNI Policing Districts and in an attempt to retrieve this information would require a manual trawl of the records which would in excess of the 18 hour cost limit.
PSNI hold statistics for ‘injury road traffic collisions’ and our response has been provided on this basis. With regards to Request 10 of your request whilst records are held centrally there is no electronically mechanism that can extract this information, therefore in order to identify whether there were any collision related arrests / charges each occurrence would need to be manually checked. This would take approximately 15mins per occurrence. For the calendar year 2024 there were 4,753 injury involved collisions. This would require nearly 1,200 hours of checks and put the request 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.
With regards to data for ‘damage only collisions’ reported to PSNI:
- Data for the 2024/25 financial year will not be published until the 30th May 2025. Latest available data is for the calendar year 2024.
- In addition, datasets relating to 2024 collisions, casualties and vehicles is available on the Open Data website. Please see link below:
The related publication is available on the PSNI website https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/road-traffic-collision-statistics
https://www.opendatani.gov.uk/@police-service-of-northern-ireland/police-recorded-injury-road-traffic-collision-statistics-northern-ireland-2024
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.