FOI 454-2025 / Apr 2025 / Phones
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 454-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 18th April 2025 as follows:
This is a request for information about the number of stolen mobile phones that have been recovered by police. I understand that it is impossible to reunite many with their owners because many devices aren’t registered stolen or the IMEI numbers are unknown by their owner.
- How many stolen or suspected stolen mobile phones are currently held by the force having been recovered by officers?
- How many stolen or suspected stolen phones have been recovered by the force in the past five years? If possible it would be helpful if this data is broken down by year.
- Of these, how many have successfully been returned to their owners?
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. With regard to mobile phones held by the force, the Property Management System only records that a phone has been seized and not whether it was, for example, in relation to being suspected as stolen. In order to determine where a mobile phone held by the force was suspected of having been stolen it would be necessary to examine the corresponding crimes, on an individual basis, to ascertain the circumstances of each case. As an indication of the time involved the business area has advised that there were 2600 mobile phones seized in 2024 which, at an estimate of 5 minutes per crime, would equate 226 hours to alone. In addition, there is no offence of ‘theft of mobile phone’ and no way of readily identifying from the Crime Recording System where this has occurred in relation to an offence. Keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable, they will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation, these are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation. Therefore, in order to determine whether a mobile phone has been stolen, and then whether record has been made that it has been recovered and returned to the owner, it would be necessary to manually review each and every offence of theft, burglary and robbery, recorded during the stated period. I can advise that an analyst has conducted a search for all offences, recorded just for a 12 month period, where a mobile phone could feasibly have be reported stolen, and this returned over 9,400 crimes. Even at an extremely conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record to review and collate this information, this would equate to in excess of 300 hours of work for a 12 month period alone, and this figure would likely apply to each year of the specified time period.
Therefore, searches 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’, which equates to 18 hours work at a standard rate of £25 per hour, 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, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for your request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, due to the volume of records that would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit.
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