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:
How many fuel thefts were reported in each month of 2020 and 2021 from:
1. another person’s vehicle (theft of fuel from a vehicle)
2. from a forecourt (where a driver refuels without paying)
Please give the data for each month of each year and each category (1 & 2) separately
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 with the below caveats noted.
• 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.
• The data provided has been taken from systems where the offence type was either 'Other theft and handling' or 'Theft from a motor vehicle' and the keywords 'Petrol', Diesel' or 'fuel' were used in the MO.
• There were 2,506 offences of making off without payment, for these offences where the location was either 'Petrol station', forecourt' or 'service station' they were assumed to be for fuel as not to do so would make this request subject to a section 12 exemption and therefore refused. For those where the location was not recorded those offences had to be manually reviewed to establish if relevant to this request.
The results of the research as carried out above is as follows.
1.
|
Month |
2020 |
2021 |
Total |
|
Jan |
9 |
2 |
11 |
|
Feb |
8 |
2 |
10 |
|
Mar |
3 |
1 |
4 |
|
Apr |
3 |
1 |
4 |
|
May |
3 |
2 |
5 |
|
Jun |
3 |
- |
3 |
|
Jul |
2 |
- |
2 |
|
Aug |
- |
1 |
1 |
|
Sep |
1 |
6 |
7 |
|
Oct |
4 |
2 |
6 |
|
Nov |
3 |
1 |
4 |
|
Dec |
2 |
5 |
7 |
|
Total |
41 |
23 |
64 |
2.
|
Month |
2020 |
2021 |
Total |
|
Jan |
186 |
89 |
275 |
|
Feb |
139 |
80 |
219 |
|
Mar |
117 |
74 |
191 |
|
Apr |
73 |
114 |
187 |
|
May |
75 |
78 |
153 |
|
Jun |
83 |
109 |
192 |
|
Jul |
89 |
125 |
214 |
|
Aug |
143 |
129 |
272 |
|
Sep |
140 |
102 |
242 |
|
Oct |
118 |
89 |
207 |
|
Nov |
91 |
106 |
197 |
|
Dec |
84 |
99 |
183 |
|
Total |
1,338 |
1,194 |
2,532 |
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.
