Speed awareness courses 2023-24

Request

I would like to please submit an FOI request for the following data for the period of July 2023 to July 2024:

1. The number of motorists who have been sent a letter giving them the option to pay and complete a speed awareness course as an alternative for receiving points on their license.

2. The location of the motorist who has been sent the letter.

3. The cost of the course the motorist must pay in lieu of the points on their license.

4. The number of motorists that have failed to complete/remain present for the duration of the speed awareness course.

Clarification

1. For the dates requested, is this related to the date of the offence or the date
the letter was sent to them? The date the letter was sent to them.

2. What is meant by the location? We would not provide motorists addresses. We are not after motorists addresses but rather their general location in the UK. This could be the general region, such as the south east or it could be the county they’re in. No names or details required.

3. Already provided in previous response. Please provide this again.

Response

Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

I approached the administrator for Safety Cameras and Ticket Processing
Department. The number of locations recorded does not match the total number of letters sent. This is due to how the locations have been recorded by officers. To provide full details we would have to cleanse the data for other 7000+ offences which would exceed the hours permitted for dealing with an FOI request. At a conservative 3 mins per incident this process would take over 350 hrs.

In essence, we would have to review and manually check all relevant incidents to extract the level of detail of the cases that met the criteria of your request; this process would take much longer than 18 hours’ work.

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.

Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. Please note point 30 of the below link:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/section-12-requests-where-the-cost-of-compliance-exceeds-the-appropriate-limit/

Section 16 - Duty to Provide advice and Assistance

Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information.

Although excess cost removes the force's obligations under the Freedom of
Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded.

I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s
regulations for the remainder of your request neither does it bind South Yorkshire Police to any commitment that it will release information in such a manner in the future.

We approached our Safety Cameras and Ticket Processing Department with your
request. An analyst provided us with the following data and explanation(s):

1. 44583 motorists were sent a course offer letter.

2. Please see the attached.

Please note - The number of locations recorded does not match the total number of letters sent. This is due to how the locations have been recorded by officers. To provide full details we would have to cleanse the data for other 7000+ offences which would exceed the hours permitted for dealing with an FOI
request.

3. Please see table below.

4. 22

Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.