In each of the last 5 financial years, how many people have been the subject of anti-social behaviour?

Of those numbers, how many were harassed by a neighbour?

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested. Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:  

(a)        states that fact;

(b)        specifies the exemption in question and;

(c)        states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

The following exemption applies to the disclosure of the information:

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

In order to determine how many people have been the subject of anti-social behaviour, South Yorkshire Police would have to access each anti-social behaviour related incident over the past five financial years, of which there are hundreds of thousands, to ascertain how many victims were involved in each incident. This would exceed the appropriate limit. The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.

However, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance, please find some information below which may be of use to you.

South Yorkshire Police conducted a search of all anti-social behaviour related incidents. The following figures are taken from South Yorkshire Police Incident Database and show the total incidents ‘closed’ as ‘Anti-Social’ over the past five years and of those, the number of incidents recorded as ‘Nuisance Neighbours’.

 

	Total Anti-Social	Nuisance Neighbours
2005/2006	83400	3950
2006/2007	123922	4868
2007/2008	129194	4821
2008/2009	134767	5742
2009/2010	105354	5246
	576637	24627