Homicide victims in London from January 2022 to April 2023

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.030181

I note you seek access to the following information:

I would like to request the demographics and, if possible, names of all homicide victims in London in 2022 and 2023, broken down by case.

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)(3)&(4) - Personal information

Reason for decision

Names of all homicide victims in London in 2022 and 2023.

In most cases, Personal Data is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, as I will explain below.

A Freedom of Information Act request is not a private transaction. Both the request itself, and any information disclosed, are considered suitable for open publication. This is because, under Freedom of Information, any information disclosed is released into the wider public domain, effectively to the world and not just to one individual.

Where an individual is requesting his or her own personal data the information is always exempt.

Where an individual is requesting third party personal data the MPS must ensure that any action taken adheres to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR. To clarify, the Freedom of Information Act only allows disclosure of personal data if that disclosure would be compliant with the principles for processing personal data. These principles are outlined under section 34 of the DPA 2018 and under Article 5 of the UK GDPR.

I have considered your request for the following information below:

• Names of all homicide victims in London in 2022 and 2023.

Within the provisions of the FOIA and found that I am not permitted under the FOIA to disclose the following information:

The above requests for information is exempt under Section 40(2)(3)&(4) - Personal information of the FOIA.

Section 40(2)(3)&(4) - Personal Information - The Freedom of Information Act provides an exemption for Personal Data and this is known as the section 40 exemption.

The information sought under your Freedom of Information request includes the following which we consider to be Personal Data:

• Names of all homicide victims in London in 2022 and 2023.

Where the request is seeking access to third party personal data the section 40(2) exemption may be engaged.

In order to apply the Section 40(2) exemption, the disclosure of the requested information must satisfy either the first, second or third conditions as defined by subsections 3A, 3B and 4A of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (as amended by Section 58 of the Data Protection Act 2018).

The first condition ensures that the exemption would apply in circumstances where the disclosure of the information would breach any of the Data Protection Act 2018 principles.

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 the 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.

Disclosure

I have disclosed the following information.

Please find attached data, which shows Homicide Victims by Demographics (gender, age group and ethnicity) and Year.

IMPORTANT:
• Please ensure that the note section within the spreadsheet is read in conjunction with the data in the report to ensure that it is interpreted correctly