FOI 153-2025 / Feb 2025 / Drink spiking
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 153-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 3rd February 2025, and the revised request received on 3rd March 2025, as follows:
I would like to submit a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) regarding reports of drink spiking. Please provide the relevant information for the period between 1 January 2022 until this request is processed.
Please could you provide the following:
- For each report concerning drink spiking, please could you provide the following:
- a) The date the drink spiking report was filed
- b) The specific location (for example: address of the establishment)
- c) The age of the person who filed the drink spiking report (if you are unable to provide the exact age, please could you provide me with age groups. For example: 18-24, 25-49, 50-64, 65+)
- d) Gender of the victim who filed the report
- e) Whether the drink spiking report led to an investigation and/or a charge
Revised request:
Apologies for clarifying my request so close to the reply deadline, but if possible I would like to change parts of my request.
Please could you disregard the specific location (question 1b of my original request). I have also put in bold the questions from my original request that I have now altered.
Please could I request the following under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:
- For each report concerning drink spiking, please could you provide the following for the period between 1 January 2022 until this request is processed:
- A yearly breakdown of the numbers of drink spiking reports filed.
- For each year, could you please provide the age of the person who filed the drink spiking report and provide a breakdown by the following age groups: 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61+.
- Gender of the victim who filed the report.
- Whether the drink spiking report led to an investigation and/or a charge.
Please could I have the response in an Excel spreadsheet. In regards to a), b), c) and d), I would ideally like it in this format:
Column A: Year (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025)
Column B: Number of males per year
Column C: Number of females per year
Column D: Age group 11-20
Column E: Age group 21-30
Column F: Age group 31-40
Column G: Age group 41-50
Column H: Age group 51-60
Column I: Age group 60+
Column J: Led to investigation and/or a charge
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request. This information is given in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
Please be advised that there is currently no specific offence of ‘spiking’ and no flag or marker within the crime recording system to easily identify where spiking has been a factor in a crime. Further, 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, in the event that the circumstance is relevant to a crime, but where the keyword(s) has not been mentioned within those fields, then such records will not be returned.
Due to not being a specific offence, spiking can form part of, and be investigated and prosecuted under, various crimes. Therefore, in order to determine a response to the request, it would be necessary to examine a broad spectrum of crimes, recorded during the stated period, on an individual basis. This 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.
In accordance with Section 12(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 refining your request; however, due to the volume of records that would need to be manually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to do this to allow for searches to be conducted 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