Dog attacks

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/007828/F

 Version Date: 23/04/2025

The Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information.

Data Processing:

Crimes recorded on crime information system – NICHE

'No crimes' included and 'non notifiables' included

Qliksense Report: Crime and Outcomes

Filtered by date: 01/01/2023 to 31/12/2024

Offence Description:

• Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control causing injury (recordable)
• Dog not under proper control - complaint only nil return
• Owner of a dog worrying livestock
• Owner / person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control - no injury (recordable)
• Owner of a dog allows it to be dangerously out of control in public place and cause injury (recordable)
• Dog causing injury in a private place (recordable)
• Owner / Person In Charge Of A Dog Dangerously Out Of Control - No Injury
• Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control in a public place - no injury (recordable)
• Owner / person in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury resulting in death (recordable)
• Person in charge of a dog allow it to be dangerously out of control in public place and cause injury (recordable)
• Owner / person in charge of dog dangerously out of control causing injury to assistance dog (recordable)
• Dog causing fear of injury in a private place (recordable)

Data Limitations:

There are a number of offences relating to dogs which are not notifiable to the Home Office by Police Forces. Therefore, Police are not required to record a crime in respect of these. As a result, figures for these offences after November 14th 2022 are highly likely to decrease or completely stop.

Police are required to record the reported incident on our command-and-control system. However, such incidents are not easily located given the very generic classifications applied to the incidents, namely ASB – Animal problems, or Public Safety – Animals/Wildlife.                                           

1. How many dog attacks were reported to your force throughout the whole of 2023? If possible, can this data be split by month? If not, an overall annual total is fine.
2. How many dog attacks were reported to your force throughout the whole of 2024? Again, a monthly breakdown would be nice but is not a dealbreaker.

Between January 1st 2023 and December 31st 2024, there were 2366 crimes of "dog attacks" or "dogs being dangerously out of control" recorded.