FOI 29284

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0029284/26

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 7^th September 2026. Please find below the response to your request:

Please provide data for the period of 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025 relating to residential burglaries where a key safe, key lockbox, external key box or similar device was recorded as being involved in the attempted or completed burglary.

For the purposes of this request, I am interested in incidents where:

• The offender damaged, tampered with or forced open a key safe to obtain a key
• The offender removed, stole or otherwise gained access to a key safe in order to obtain a key
• The offender obtained a key from a key safe and used it, or attempted to use it, to gain entry to the property
• The key safe itself was targeted or tampered with as part of an attempted or completed burglary, regardless of whether the offender ultimately gained entry to the property.

Where possible, please provide the figures broken down by calendar year:

• 2021
• 2022
• 2023
• 2024
• 2025

For the purposes of this request, "key safe/lockbox" refers to an externally located box or safe used to store a key to a property, including devices described as a key safe, key lockbox, external key box or similar.

Reply

West Mercia Police have conducted searches and hold the following information.

Caveat: There is no marker, tag or separate field to denote that an offence involved a key safe. We have therefore completed a keyword search of the incident summaries and reviewed the returns to include only those believed relevant.

The Home Office changed the name of the Offence titles and groups used in relation to burglaries in April 2023 which is some offences appear to have only occurred before this date and some only occurred after.

Excluded are offences where access was gained to a dwelling, and items stolen from a key safe within the property. Included are offences where the key safe was checked/damaged but either no entry was gained or access was gained via another means (i.e. when no key was in the key safe), where the key safe and/or key was stolen but no access was gained and where a key safe was present but it is unknown how the property was accessed i.e. a door may have been left unlocked.