FOI 349044
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 349044
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 24th July 2024. Please find below the response to your request:
- The count of Property Items that were Stolen or Stolen & Recovered in any offence notifiable to the Home Office, for each of the following three Property Types:
- HB - Ornaments/objects d'art
- PF - Art/Draw Materials
- HH -Paintings/drawing/tapestry/embroidered wallhangings etc
Please provide this information for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 to date (end of June), broken down by year.
- Details of the top 10 most expensive items stolen each year across these categories (ie to limit the time, 10 in total not 10 in each category), including:
- Estimated cost/value of the item
- Brief description of the stolen item
- If available, any details where a ransom was paid by the owner for the recovery of the item.
Reply
Your request for information has been considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”), and I am not obliged to provide the information requested.
S.12(1) of the Act states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. For police forces in England and Wales, the "appropriate limit" is £450 or 18 hours of work as set by the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
The information you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. Although there is a property field on the crime system it is not mandatory and not regularly completed. The crime data that we provide to the Home Office does not include stolen property. We would therefore be unable to provide a count of property items stolen or stolen/recorded. The only possible way to try to locate the numbers requested would be to carry out keyword searches however this would not give accurate or complete information and there would be too many records to manually check. There are over 3000 records alone in 2023 under shoplifting. In order to ascertain whether the information you have requested is held would take in excess of 18 hours as each record would have to be checked individually.
In accordance with s.17(5) of the Act, this acts as a Refusal Notice.
Under s.16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request.
Unfortunately, due to the volume of records that would need to be reviewed I am unable to identify information that could be supplied within the fees limit.