Offences involving legally owned firearms and shotguns

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.026684

I note you seek access to the following information:

Please provide the following data:

1. The number of offences committed using legally owned firearms and shotguns (i.e. subject to a current licence, being used by the licence holder or other approved person) over the past five years, to the most recent possible date.

Broken down by offence or offence group to the most detailed level possible

Decision

I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 40(2) – Personal Information

Reason for decision

The Section 40(2) Exemption has been utilised because, due to low numbers, we are unable to provide the full breakdown requested as the MPS believes that this will lead to the identification of individuals.

It is important to note that a Freedom of Information request is not a private transaction. Both the request itself and any information disclosed are considered suitable for open publication, that is, once access to information is granted to one person under the Act, it is then considered public information and must be communicated to any individual should a request be received. Any information released under the Act is also published on the MPS website.

Section 40(2)(a)(b) and (3)(a)(i) - Personal Information - There are six Data Protection principles set out in the 2018 act and these can be found at section 34.

In this instance I have decided that the disclosure of Personal Data would be incompatible with the first Data Protection principle which states that the processing (in this case the disclosure) of the data must be both lawful and fair.

The basis for determining whether such a disclosure would be lawful and fair is outlined under section 35 of the 2018 act which states that the subject of the data must have given his/her consent for disclosure, or the processing must be necessary for the performance of a task carried out by a competent authority. As we do not have consent for the disclosure of personal data and the disclosure is not necessary for any law enforcement purposes it would not be considered lawful processing. Such a disclosure would therefore contravene the first data protection principle.

I have applied the exemption provided under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act to this information as the first condition, defined in subsection 3(A)(a) of Section 40 has been satisfied.

Disclosure

Our records show that within the last 3 years, 4 offences have been recorded as having been committed in by lawful holders of firearms and their legally held guns. 3 of these were committed under the Firearms Act 1968 and 1 offence under the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

To provide any further details could lead to the identification of individuals which would contravene the GDPR data protection principles.