Fraud - 381/22

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:

1. How many fraud crimes were recorded (or accepted from NFIB/ActionFraud) by your force between 01/01/21 and 31/12/21?
2. Please provide the breakdown of Fraud investigations closed between 01/01/21 and 31/12/21 according to Home Office Outcome Codes (1 - 21).

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.

 

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

 

2. This data has been drawn from systems specifically to identify any fraud cases disseminated to us by National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).  This is based on the "report made" date for the date that we have received the report from Action Fraud.
3. This data is again based purely on those that have been disseminated to us from Action Fraud for cases that have been closed - this is based on the date that we have finalised the crime.

Outcome Of Cases Disseminated To Us By Action Fraud	Count
Caution adult	5
Charge/Summons	4
Evidential difficulties	83
Investigation complete - no suspect identified	43
Investigation not in public interest	1
Not in public interest (police)	2
Not stated	10
Other agency action	8
Victim declines or is unable to identify suspect	2
Victim does not support police action	6
Victim or key witness is deceased or too ill to give evidence	1
YOT triage	2

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete.  However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes.  The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.  As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

 

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

 

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another.  Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

 

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police.  Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation.  In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.