FOI 45661

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 456691

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 5th February 2026.  Please find below the response to your request:

How many cases of theft that involved theft of tools in
2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025?

Can you also provide a breakdown of all outcome types for the recorded cases in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, in particular for these two outcomes:

• Investigation complete – no suspect identified
• Charged/Summonsed

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.  There is no specific offence relating to the theft of tools. A search would therefore need to be done for all Theft or Burglary offences and then keyword searches carried out. A check would then need to be carried out for false positives. There are 4010 Burglary and Theft offences and 1507 Theft from motor vehicles.  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. 

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.