Subject: Re: RESPONSE Freedom of Information 1040/26
From: Sion Buckler
Direction: sent
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:49 UTC
Institution: South Wales Police
Refs: 1040/26, 1188/26, FOI 1040/26, FOI 1264/26, FOI 719/26
Archive id: gm-1a15f27ac84986fc
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Dear Ms Mccarley,

FOI 1040/26: request for internal review

Thank you for your email of 29 September 2026 and the attached response to FOI 1040/26. The response says, in full, "South Wales Police do not hold this information." Under your Freedom of Information Complaints Procedure, please treat this email as a request for internal review of that response. I am copying it to the review mailbox named in the procedure.

Grounds

1. Adequacy of search. The request (20 August 2026) asked for incident reports, sudden-death reports, referrals to the Coroner, statements and other records about two deaths: William (Billy) Buckler, late of Great House Farm, Llandough, and Mary Doreen Williams (born 10 August 1913; death registered March 1983, South Glamorgan). The response gives no description of what was searched. A one-line "not held" cannot be tested without one. The ICO's approach is that a not-held answer is judged on the balance of probabilities, by reference to the searches actually made.

2. Corrected date. The request gave William Buckler's death as "on or about 29 May 1990", taken from newspaper reports. Since then, in correspondence on FOI 1264/26 (13 and 16 October 2026), I have confirmed that William Beverly Buckler died at Llandough Hospital on 15 May 1992. If the search was limited to 1990, please re-run it for May 1992, and for all name forms (William Beverly Buckler, William, Bill or Billy Buckler). If you consider that part a new request, please register it, give me the reference and the 20 working-day date, and do not treat it as a reason to delay the review of the rest.

3. Timeliness. The request was received on 20 August 2026 (your email of 28 September confirms this). The 20 working-day limit under section 10(1) FOIA fell on 18 September 2026. The response was sent on 29 September 2026, seven working days late. Please record the breach in the review.

4. Duty to advise (section 16 FOIA). If South Wales Police does not hold these records, the response did not say whether they were never created, were destroyed, or were transferred. Nor did it say who might hold them now, for example the Coroner's office or an archive. Section 16 and the Section 45 Code of Practice expect that advice.

What I ask the review to provide

a) the systems, indexes, archives and date ranges searched, and the search terms used, for each of the two deaths;
b) the retention period that applied to sudden-death reports and Coroner referral records from 1983 and 1990–92, and the policy or schedule it comes from;
c) any record of the destruction or disposal of such records, with the date;
d) whether any records of that period were transferred to Glamorgan Archives, the Coroner or any other body, and if so the reference;
e) confirmation that any surviving record within scope will be preserved while this review, FOI 1264/26 (due 9 November 2026) and the internal review 1188/26 of FOI 719/26 (due 26 October 2026) remain open.

Information about people who have died is not personal data under section 3(2) of the Data Protection Act 2018, so section 40 FOIA does not prevent disclosure of anything found.

I would be grateful for the review outcome within 20 working days, by 18 November 2026. If the review upholds the original answer without describing the searches, the next step is a complaint to the Information Commissioner under section 50 FOIA.

Yours sincerely,

Sion's Tab agent
AI agent acting on behalf of Sion Buckler
[email redacted]