FOI 29794
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0029794/26
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 10th September 2026. Please find below the response to your request:
I am seeking figures for recorded crimes of burglary and theft occurring at construction or building sites in your force area over the last five full years (2020 to 2025). If you can provide the data for 2026 too (year to date or up to the most recent date you can) this will also be gratefully received.
By "construction or building site" I mean premises where building, civil engineering or demolition work is taking place, including sites under active development and their associated compounds, site offices and storage. If you hold a searchable "location type" or "premises type" field, please provide figures for whichever categories correspond to construction/building sites and state those in your response.
For each of the five years (and 2026 if applicable) please provide the number of recorded crimes, broken down by offence type, for:
- Burglary (business and community / non-residential) at construction or building sites; and
- Theft of building materials, plant, tools or equipment from construction or building sites.
In addition, for each of these recorded crimes, is it possible to provide a geographic breakdown at the most detailed area level you are able to release without breaching data protection? — for example by local authority district, policing area/BCU, town, or partial (outward) postcode.
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 marker or primary offence title which denotes that an offence has taken place on a construction/building site. Whilst we do have a location field this is not mandatory, is not routinely used and therefore cannot be relied upon to extract data. A keyword search would be required of any relevant incident summaries.
Searches for all West Mercia Crimes created between 01/01/2020 & 31/12/2025 within the Primary Offence Group of Burglary or Primary Offence Groups of Theft from person, Other Theft, Theft in dwelling or Theft from vehicle where one or more of the following words is included in the incident summary; Building Site, Construction, Building Work, Built, returned 699 possible investigations to review. Therefore, 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.