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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 630-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 27th June 2023 as follows:
Q1. Please provide a list of theft offences reported to your police force by NHS Trusts or other NHS organisations in each of the financial years of 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23, specifying:
Q1a. Which NHS organisation reported the theft
Q1b. What item(s) was/were reported as missing or stolen
Q1c. The value of said items, in pounds
Q1d. The recorded outcome of the case
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. The crime system records the person reporting as an individual’s name only, and there are no identifiers to locate when an individual, acting on behalf of an NHS Trust or organisation, has reported a crime. Therefore, in order to answer Q1 and Q1a of the request in full, it would be necessary to individually examine all theft offences, recorded in the specified period, for any mention of whether the person reporting is linked to the NHS. In addition, further manual searches would be required to answer Q1b and Q1c, as information relating to items stolen and value is not centrally recorded. Such searches would take an inordinate amount of time and would exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with s12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. I can advise that it may be possible to carry out a search for theft offences, where the offence location ‘type’ has been selected as ‘Hospital/Hospice’, ‘Doctor’s Surgery/Clinic, Care/Nursing Home and/or Dentist, however, it would not be possible to identify where the results relate to NHS premises as opposed to privately owned organisations. In addition, this is not a mandatory field and so is not always completed, therefore any results retrieved by this method cannot be considered entirely accurate. Alternatively, a search could be carried out for all theft offences where the offence location premise name contains the keyword ‘NHS’, however, this is not a mandatory field either, and, in the event that there are relevant offences recorded, but where the keyword is not present within the premise name, then these will not have been returned within the search. For this reason, information retrieved by way of a keyword search cannot be assumed to be accurate. Should you wish to revise and resubmit your request in either of these ways, please be advised that Q1b & Q1c will still require a manual review of each individual report, and therefore, depending on the results, these questions are likely to incur an excess fees response.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB