FOI 270-2025 / Feb 2025 / Stolen sheep
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 270-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 28th February 2025 as follows:
Under the FOI Act 2000, please provide me with the number of sheep reported stolen to the force, broken down into the following years: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
If there is time, please provide the outcome of each reported offence.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not available in a readily retrievable format. There is no way of readily identifying from the Crime Recording System where an offence involves the taking of sheep. 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 provide a response, it would be necessary to manually review the wider investigation papers in relation to each and every ‘Other theft’ offence, recorded during the stated period. This would involve reviewing thousands of records on an individual basis and the work involved in locating and retrieving the requested information would exceed the cost threshold of £450, 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 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 within the fees limit. Even if you were to reduce the time period to a year, this would still exceed 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