FOI 663-2025 / June 2025 / E-bikes
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 663-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 27th June 2025 as follows:
Q1. The number of illegal / non-compliant e-bikes that have been seized by your police force in each of the past five calendar years?
Please also include:
A breakdown by year, please include: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Q2. The number of reported incidents of phone snatching or muggings in which an illegal or non-compliant e-bike was used as part of the offence, recorded over the past five calendar years.
Please also include:
A yearly breakdown of such incidents, please include: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Q3. The number of fines and/or arrests made in connection with the use, possession, or operation of illegal e-bikes over the past five calendar years?
Please also provide:
A yearly breakdown of the number of fines and arrests, please include: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that some of the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. Regarding Q2, there is no specific offence for robbery (mugging) of a mobile phone or theft of a mobile phone. In addition, there is no identifier for illegal ‘e-bike’ within the Crime Recording System and no flag or marker to easily identify when the involvement of an ‘e-bike’ is relevant to a crime. 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 that do not contain all information in relation to an investigation. Therefore, in order to provide an accurate response to your request, it would be necessary to manually review the wider investigation report and associated papers in relation to each and every ‘Robbery’ and ‘Theft from the Person’ offence recorded during the stated period. Given the number of such offences recorded annually by the force, these searches would take an inordinate amount of time and therefore, 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 part of the request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, due to the number of records which would need to be individually examined, I am unable to suggest a way to revise this part of your request into one which could be managed within the fees limit.
I can advise that it may be possible to conduct searches to locate and retrieve the total number of e-bikes seized for the specified period within the fees limit, however, before revising your request you may wish to review the link below to our response to a previous FOI request relating to ‘e-bike’ seizures:
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