FOI 959-2025 / Sep 2025 / Offences involving killing swans
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 959-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 24th September 2025 as follows:
In the financial years 2020/21, 21/22, 22/23, 23/24, 24/25, how many arrests were made in relation to criminal offences against or involving swans?
Of those arrests, how many involved the killing or intention of killing swans for human consumption?
Of those arrests, how many were non-UK citizens?
Of those arrested, how many were convicted?
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response:
Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. There is no offence specific against or involving swans, and such circumstances would form part of ‘Theft’, ‘criminal damage’ and ‘animal cruelty’ offences.
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 determine the information requested, it would be necessary to manually review each and every theft, criminal damage and animal cruelty offence, recorded between 2020 and 2025, on an individual basis.
This would involve reviewing over 3000 records and, at a minimum of 5 minutes per record, this equates to in excess of 276 hours of work. Therefore, for these reasons, such searches would exceed the fees limit (£450) 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 your request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance; however, due to the volume of records that would need to be individually reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to reduce your request into one which could be managed 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 Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB