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. Please provide the number of recorded incidents of theft from vans/light commercial vehicles where the stolen item was listed as a tool, power tool or similar in each of the following financial years:
a. 2016/17
b. 2017/18
c. 2018/19
d. 2019/20
e. 2020/21
2. Please provide the estimated/recorded cost of tools/items stolen from vehicles listed in Question 1a-e in each of the financial years listed.
3. Please provide the number of vans stolen in each of the following financial years:
a. 2016/17
b. 2017/18
c. 2018/19
d. 2019/20
e. 2020/21
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
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.
The information requested is not held in a format that would allow its extraction within the permitted 18 hour threshold.
With regards to points 1 & 2 whilst we can state the number of thefts from Motor vehicles where the type was ‘tools’ we cannot refine this by the type of vehicle , ie vans/light commercial vehicles. The only method of extracting the information requested would be by manually reviewing each theft from motor vehicle to establish if it had been recorded that the vehicle was a van or light commercial vehicle. This would entail tens of thousands of reports. This cannot be achieved within 18 hours, therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act applies. 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.
This is in line with responses to previous similar submissions, which are published into the public domain, and which can be found on the Northumbria Police Disclosure Log.
