FOI 229 / March 2023 / Vehicle theft

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: FOI-229-2023

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 1^st March 2023 as follows:

1) How many incidents of vehicle theft have been reported to your force in the past two calendar years: 2022 and 2021.

2) Please can you also provide a breakdown of how many of these reports led to a police officer visiting the scene of the incident.

Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused you.  Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.

Response: I must advise that not all of the requested information is centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format.  All crimes are investigated; however, there is no way of ascertaining whether an officer attended the scene of the crime to investigate.  In order to determine such information it would be necessary to research each crime on an individual basis.

A calculation of the time involved is set out below: 

2017 records @ 4 minutes per record = 134 hours

This would involve a disproportionate amount of effort which would take us over the fees limit (£450) as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. 

In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please treat this letter as the Refusal Notice I am required to provide to you in respect of your request. Please note that if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. However due to the volume of records that would need to be examined I am unable to suggest a way to pare down your request into one that could be managed within the fees limit.

As a gesture of goodwill I have provided information in relation to Q1, which was retrieved during the initial research.  This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.

Q1 response:

Please note that the figures do not include attempt offences

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

[email protected]