FOI/1943 Collisions

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your email received on the 21 December 2025 in which you provided clarification in relation to a request for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request, and we provide a response for your attention.

You asked:

1. Please could you give me the number of collisions with pedestrians per calendar year 2020 to 2025 to date (January to November) and the total, divided into damage only and personal injury (fatal/serious/slight).

2. Please also give me the number of police vehicle collisions with civilian vehicles (bicycles/cars/etc) per calendar year and the total, divided into damage only and personal injury (fatal/serious/slight).

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Criminal Justice and Custody Department of Northumbria Police.  We can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however, cannot be disclosed for the following reason.

The information requested specifically at point 2 is not held statistically nor is it held in a format that would allow its extraction from systems within the permitted 18 hour threshold. The information sought refers to the number of police vehicle collisions with civilian vehicles per calendar year between 2020 and 2025; divided into damage only and personal injury (fatal/serious/slight).

After assessing your request, we can confirm that in order for us to provide the data you seek at this point, we would have to manually review every record of a collision across the specified time period to identify any that involved police and civilian vehicles. Of those that did, further review would then be required to extract the detail requested in relation to any damage and/or injuries recorded. We would then collate that data.

In considering this, we have conservatively estimated that to undertake the tasks associated with providing you with an accurate and relevant response, would equate to a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per record. As per the data there were approximately 48,000 collision records across the specified time period and as above each of these records would require a manual review to locate, extract and collate the data you seek.

We have calculated, based on the interrogation assessment of 5 minutes per record, that it would take over 4000 hours to prepare and provide a response to you that satisfied your request at point 2. 

Accordingly, we can confirm that in this case, this exceeds the cost threshold of 18 hours, thus engaging Section 12(1).  This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00.

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for this part of your request.

We have considered this part of your request and whether there is a realistic possibility of assisting you by refining the remit of this specific point.  Unfortunately, given that the parameters are already clearly defined, it has not been possible on this occasion for us to assist you further and unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with any of the information you have requested at point 2.

However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an initial assessment of the information that may be provided within the time constraints would be for point 1 as set out above only.

If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.