Drink Driving Offences - 2019 to 2021

Keywords

Drink, Driving, Influence, Alcohol, Force, Area, Month, Top, Days, Recorded, Caught, Arrest, Numbers, Published, Data, Offences.

Publication Number

PUB 1336

FOI Reference Number

16236

Request Title

Drink Driving Offences

Date Range

2019 to 2021

Information Requested

1. The number of motorists caught drink driving / under the influence of alcohol in your force area, broken down by month for 2019, 2020 and 2021 to date.

2. The top three days with the highest record of drink driving offences, broken down by year for 2019, 2020 and 2021 to date.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Full Refusal with Section 21 and Section 22 Exemptions

Information Correct as at

N/A

Date of Disclosure

09 November 2021

Related Documents/Links

N/A

FOI 16236 Response

Having completed enquiries within Essex Police in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request, however, Essex Police are not obliged to provide information if the information held is already published or intended for future publication.  Therefore, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by your request on the basis that the exemptions given at Section 21(1) and Section 22(1)(a) of the FOIA apply.

The legislation: 

Section 21 Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under Section 1 is exempt information.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)—

(a) information may be reasonably accessible to the applicant even though it is accessible only on payment, and

(b) information is to be taken to be reasonably accessible to the applicant if it is information which the public authority or any other person is obliged by or under any enactment to communicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) to members of the public on request, whether free of charge or on payment.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), information which is held by a public authority and does not fall within subsection (2)(b) is not to be regarded as reasonably accessible to the applicant merely because the information is available from the public authority itself on request, unless the information is made available in accordance with the authority’s publication scheme and any payment required is specified in, or determined in accordance with, the scheme.

Section 21 of the Act (Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means) states that information is exempt information if it is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under Section 1 of the FOIA.  Section 21 is an absolute exemption and where information falls within the scope of an absolute exemption, a public authority is not obliged to communicate it to an applicant and is also not obliged to comply with the duty to confirm or deny the existence of the information requested.

Section 22 Information intended for future publication

(1) Information is exempt information if-

(a)  The information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not)

(b)  The information was already held with a view to such publication at the time when the request for information was made, and

(c)   It is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph (a)

Section 22 is a qualified exemption and as such is subject to a public interest test.  This means that Essex Police has identified the exemption and has considered whether the public interest in not disclosing the information outweighed the public interest test in disclosing the information.  Although there is a public interest in knowing the details of FOI requests as this leads to greater transparency, Section 22 allows for circumstances when it is reasonable and correct for public authorities to delay the provision of information until it is made generally available through publication.

However, having said the above and in an effort to assist, please see below link to the FOI Publication:

Drink/Drug Driving Monthly Arrest Numbers

From this published data it seems the highest number of offences recorded was in:

2019  December

2020  May

This publication will be updated as soon as new data is made available.