FOI 510-2025 / May 2025 / Cuckooing
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 510-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 8th May 2025 as follows:
This is in relation to 'cuckooing' which the government describes as a highly exploitative practice where criminals seize control of a vulnerable person's home without consent to conduct illegal criminal activities.
I would like to request the following information:
- How many reports of cuckooing have you had within the financial year of (a) 2019-20 (b) 2020-21 (c) 2021-22 (d) 2022-23 (e) 2023-24 (f) 2024-25
- How many of these reports of cuckooing included people with disabilities in the financial year of (a) 2019-20 (b) 2020-21 (c) 2021-22 (d) 2022-23 (e) 2023-24 (f) 2024-25
- What is the gender breakdown of the victims of cuckooing across the financial year of (a) 2019-20 (b) 2020-21 (c) 2021-22 (d) 2022-23 (e) 2023-24 (f) 2024-25
- If you are able to provide the average age of victims in each financial year, I would be interested in that too.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and; therefore, not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no specific offence of ‘cuckooing’ and there are no flags or easily identifiable markers to highlight where this may be a factor. Therefore, in order to determine a response to your request, it would first be necessary to manually review all incidents and crimes, recorded within the specified period, to identify whether ‘cuckooing’ was mentioned, or where a course of conduct akin to cuckooing appeared to be an element. Such searches would involve an inordinate amount of time which would take us over the fees limit (£450) as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice in relation to your 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, on this occasion, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request to enable the information to be retrieved 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