FOI 1219-2025/26- Prosecution time limit expired

Request:

I would like to request information held by your police force relating to recorded crime cases where a suspect was identified, but no prosecution or formal disposal took place because the statutory time limit for prosecution expired. For example, the six-month time limit for summary-only offences or other applicable prosecution or custody time limits.

Specifically, please provide the following for each of the last five full calendar years:

Q1. The number of recorded crime cases where a suspect was identified and the case was closed, finalised, or resulted in no further action because the prosecution time limit expired before charge, caution, or other disposal

Q2. A breakdown of these cases by the recorded reason for expiry or delay, for example (but not limited to):

failure to complete a suspect interview before the time limit administrative or case-handling delay staff availability or resourcing issues, including sickness or workload evidential delays other recorded reasons

If your police force does not record a single explicit category for "prosecution time limit expired", please provide the closest equivalent data held. For example, cases flagged as "time-barred", "out of time", or similar.

If fulfilling this request in full would exceed the cost limit set out in Section 12 of the Act, I would be grateful for advice and assistance under Section 16 as to how the request could be refined to fall within the limit.

Please provide the information in an electronic format, such as a spreadsheet or CSV file.

Response: 

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

In order to retrieve the requested information for Q2, it would be necessary to manually review all reports with a outcome of ‘prosecution time limit expired’ for the timeframe requested to establish the reason for such. This manual process would mean reading through over 1000 reports which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we may be able to provide some information for the Q1 if you resubmit and omit Q2.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.