FOI 439836

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 439836

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 29^th October 2025. Please find below the response to your request:

The number of thefts from vehicles reported in the last 5 years with a yearly and monthly breakdown, if possible. If this time period is not possible, please provide me with the number reported in the last year.

Please could you also provide me with the value of goods stolen from vehicles in the last five years, with a yearly and monthly breakdown, if you have this information. If this time period is not possible, please provide me with the value of goods stolen in the last year, if you have this information.

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 with regards to the second part of your request for the value of the items stolen. We do not routinely record the value of items stolen in the crime recording system. The values may be written in the incident summaries but this is not always the case and would require a manual review of the incident summary fields to obtain this information (if recorded). There are over 12,000 records. 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 for this part of your request.

However, I can provide the information requested for the first question as this was retrieved during our initial research. This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.

• The number of thefts from vehicles reported in the last 5 years with a yearly and monthly breakdown, if possible.