Clares law (FOI Ref: 346A/25)

Request

Please may you provide me with the number of Clare's Law applications you have received since the law came into force in March 2014. 

Please provide the information in the form of an Excel spreadsheet detailing the number of applications per year, spanning 2014 to 2024 inclusive. 

Could you please also provide the average time it took to complete each application per year - similarly if that could be provided in an Excel spreadsheet that would be brilliant.

We clarified with you on 12 Feb 2025 and you responded on 13^th Feb 2025.

Your amended request reads.

I am looking for the 'right to ask' information, however if that would result in a cost then the two together would also work. 

For the years 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; (2022 has been provided in link above); 2021; 2023; 2024; 2025 to date

Please provide the total number of applications for Clare's Law year by calendar year (total together right to know and right to ask)

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

We can only provide data going back to 2/10/2021 when our recording systems changed. Therefore, for the years 2014 through to 1/10/2021 the information is not held in a retrievable format.

The data we can provide has been split into right to ask and right to know applications.

Please be advised that the data is provided in PDF as this is deemed the most secure format to avoid any possibility of `hidden data` being inadvertently shared.

However, it can be converted by the user into CSV or excel. There are guidelines how to do this available on the internet.

In regard the average time taken:

Please be advised that this is not a valid Freedom of information Act request as it does not fulfil Section 8 of the Act. It is not a request for specific recorded information, and the authority does not have to answer your question if this would mean creating new information or giving an opinion or judgement that is not already recorded.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data. 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be considered when those data are used.  

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.