FOI 288-2025 / Mar 2025 / Impounded vehicles
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 288-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 5th March 2025 as follows:
This is an information request relating to vehicles impounded by the force, namely mopeds/scooters and vehicles registered with the motability scheme.
Please provide the following information, for the 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 (to present) financial years:
- The number of mopeds or scooters impounded in relation to PWITs or drug investigations.
Please also, for the same financial years, provide the following information:
- Vehicles (of any kind) impounded for any crime which are registered with the motability scheme. Please provide a breakdown of the types of crime for those impounded.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
On this occasion, Warwickshire Police are unable to confirm whether or not any information is held and Section 12(2) applies.
Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”
In order to ascertain whether an impounded vehicle is linked to a crime, and then whether the vehicle is a registered with the Motability Scheme, it would be necessary to cross reference vehicles recovered/seized to ascertain whether there is a corresponding investigation/incident logs which would then need to be scrutinised. This would involve reviewing thousands of records per year on an individual basis.
With regard the number of mopeds or scooters impounded in relation to PWITs/drug investigations, although it is possible to isolate the vehicle type to a certain extent, not all vehicles have information entered; therefore, it would also be necessary to review those records to ascertain whether they relate to a moped/scooter. During the requested period there are 118 mopeds/scooters listed, and a further 2207 where the vehicle is not stated. However, at an estimate of 10 minutes per record, even if we were to review the 118 records only, this would take in excess of 19 hours to complete.
Therefore, the cost of complying with paragraph (a) of section 1(1), would be above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of confirming or denying whether any information specified in this part of the request is held, exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with Section 12(2) 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.
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