FOI 27517

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0027517/26

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 25^th August 2026. Please find below the response to your request:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, please provide the following information.

For each calendar year 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to date, please provide the number of recorded robbery offences in which property recorded as stolen included a wristwatch/watch with a recorded value of:

1. a) £5,000–£9,999
2. b) £10,000–£24,999
3. c) £25,000–£49,999
4. d) £50,000 or more.

For each of the above years, please also provide the combined recorded value of the watches stolen in these robbery offences.

For the 10 most recent robbery offences during this period in which a watch valued at £50,000 or more was recorded as stolen, please provide, where recorded:

1. The make and model of the watch.
2. The recorded value of the watch.
3. The colour of the watch.

Reply

West Mercia Police have conducted searches in relation to your request.

Caveats:

The property fields in the recording management system are not mandatory and so not always completed. Therefore, a keyword search was used as well as a search on the property code. However, if the brand of watch was included in the incident summary but not the keyword then, those offences would not be returned (ie ‘Rolex stolen’ compared to ‘Rolex watch stolen’). The incident summaries have been manually reviewed to eliminate false positives. Most false positives included the word ‘watching’ in the summary.

Unfortunately, value of a stolen item is not routinely recorded. Therefore, only if the values of the stolen items have been included in the incident summaries, have this been captured in the data table below.

Also, more than one watch may have been stolen in one offence. Therefore, the Issue table provides the number of offences only and not the number of watches.

For each calendar year 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to date, please provide the number of recorded robbery offences in which property recorded as stolen included a wristwatch/watch with a recorded value of:

1. a) £5,000–£9,999
2. b) £10,000–£24,999
3. c) £25,000–£49,999
4. d) £50,000 or more.

NB: only 6 offences stated the watch value in the incident summaries.

For each of the above years, please also provide the combined recorded value of the watches stolen in these robbery offences.

For the 10 most recent robbery offences during this period in which a watch valued at £50,000 or more was recorded as stolen, please provide, where recorded:

1. The make and model of the watch.
2. The recorded value of the watch.
3. The colour of the watch.

No specific recorded information held. There were no watches over the value of £50,000 identified.