Shoplifting - 1762/22

Date Responded 06 January 2023

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:

The number of shoplifting reports in the Northumbria Police area over the past three years, to the present date.

For the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 if possible broken down by month.

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.

For 2020 data please see below:

Month	Count
Jan	1005
Feb	1025
Mar	815
Apr	421
May	474
Jun	523
Jul	713
Aug	631
Sep	785
Oct	700
Nov	685
Dec	673
Grand Total	8450

As the information you have requested for 2021 and 2022 (to 24 November 2022 – which was the most recent data available at the time of your request) is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal for those parts your request.

I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means

Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

This information has been asked for previously, released and is published on the Northumbria Police Disclosure Log, FOI’s 1232/22 and 1628/22 refers and the link to the Log is provided below. From these you will be able to extract the data you require.

Disclaimer

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.