XL Bully Type Dog Reports, Seizures & Arrests 2024
Publication Number: 1564
FOI Number: 20944
Information Request
I’m writing to request the following information regarding the implementation of the Dangerous Dogs Act following an update to the list of banned breeds covered by the Act.
I attach an example of a completed response from Devon and Cornwall police, which may be useful as a reference.
Please could you supply:
- The number of reports made by the public to your territorial police force of “XL Bully” dogs believed to be in contravention of the Dangerous Dogs Act since 1 February 2024.
- The number of dogs believed to be the XL Bully breed that have been seized by your territorial police force since 1 February 2024.
- The number of arrests made by your territorial police force for keeping an unregistered XL Bully, breeding these dogs, or other related offences such as selling or allowing them to be in a public space without a lead or muzzle.
FOI Duty
First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request
Second Duty – See below
Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request
Exemption - Section 12(1)
Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA
Reasoning – Essex Police are unable to provide a comprehensive data report to meet this request as the data is not available in a readily extractable format, nor is it held on a central log.
With regard to Questions 1 and 3, Essex Police is unable to report on the exact numbers of dangerous dog related offences or arrests relating to an XL Bully type dog as this cannot be accurately extracted from our crime and arrest recording systems. The specific breed or type of a dog is not a reportable field on these systems and so it may or may not be recorded in the offence investigation or custody record notes. To attempt to answer this question would require a manual review of each relevant offence or arrest record in the desired time period to ascertain whether the dog was believed to be of the XL Bully type was specifically mentioned or inferred, extracting this information and then collating it into a bespoke report.
To establish if information is held would, therefore, exceed the time and cost limits under the FOIA and would additionally qualify as the creation of data as the results cannot be processed by means of purely sorting or filtering data sources or running a database query tool. There is no requirement under the act to create data purely to answer FOI requests.
Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2)), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following
Essex Police can however report as follows:
Caveat: The data is correct as at 06 November 2024
Notes
- The data below for recorded offences and arrests may or may not accurately reflect the total numbers involving an XL Bully type dog as they only cover those offences or arrests where specific keywords have been recorded.
- The data for Question 1 has been based on the same criteria as that which was provided as an example from Devon and Cornwall Police - i.e. offences recorded under 'Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog', where the free text contains the keywords 'XL Bull' or 'XL Bully'.
- The data for Question 2 has been provided by the Essex Police Dog Section and reflects their judgement that a seized dog is of the XL Bully type as the XL Bully is not a formally recognised dog breed.
- For Question 3, the custody recording system was searched for any arrests that contained the keywords 'XL Bull' or 'XL Bully' in the arrest circumstances.
Results
Q1. The number of reports made by the public to your territorial police force of “XL Bully” dogs believed to be in contravention of the Dangerous Dogs Act since 1 February 2024.
A. There were 31 recorded offences of 'Owner or person in charge allowing dog to be dangerously out of control in any place in England or Wales (whether or not a public place) injuring any person or assistance dog' that were believed to involve an XL Bully (or suspected XL Bully) between 01/02/2024 and 03/11/2024.
Q2. The number of dogs believed to be the XL Bully breed that have been seized by your territorial police force since 1 February 2024.
A. 121 dogs believed to be of the XL Bully type have been seized since 01 February 2024
Q3. The number of arrests made by your territorial police force for keeping an unregistered XL Bully, breeding these dogs, or other related offences such as selling or allowing them to be in a public space without a lead or muzzle.
A. There have been 20 arrests whereby the recorded arrest circumstances include a reference to an XL Bully. These include arrests for possession of a banned breed, the dog being unmuzzled, injuries caused by an XL Bully,and using an XL Bully as a threat to others.
Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete. However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries. Please note although data can be extracted from several sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies. Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.
The following articles available via our publication scheme may also be of interest:
Published Items - Dangerous Dogs | Essex Police