Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
Number of crimes at ATMs/Cash machines broken down by year over the last 2x years, 2019 and 2018.
If possible please provide detail of the nature of the crime e.g. "Cash machine smashed with hammer, money stolen" or "victim robbed of bank card at cash point"
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
As it stands your request is too broad for us to complete within the permitted 18 hours. Initial searches were conducted on - Free text: ATM, Cash point, Cash machine - Location code: Cash dispenser . These searches brought back in excess 860 instances that included these keywords. This would include instances where the ATM was simply recorded as being the nearest landmark, and having no other link to the crime. To establish if a connection other than that of being just a landmark, would entail each instance to be manually reviewed. This has been estimated as taking in excess of 57 hours, , therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00.
You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for your request.
When applying Section 12 exemption our duty to assist under Section 16 of the Act would normally entail that we contact you to determine whether it is possible to refine the scope of your request to bring it within the cost limits. However, from the information we have outlined above I see no reasonable way in which we can do so.
