Callouts to Religious and Heritage Buildings

Request Number: FOI/15273

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Calls for Service

Subject: Callouts to Religious and Heritage Buildings

Request and Answer:
Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) We can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold the information you have requested however it is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and this will be further explained below. PSNI have followed the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance ‘Requests where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit’ in relation to this request, which also provides further detail on the application of Section 12 (1) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/guide-to-managing-an-foi-request/charging-a-fee-and-cost-limits/

Request Details
Please could you provide the following data for your area:

Request 1
The number of police incidents recorded at religious buildings or places of worship in each of the past three calendar years (2022–2024 and 2025 so far).

Request 2
The number of incidents at heritage or listed buildings, for the same period.

Request 3
Where recorded, a breakdown of the type of incident (e.g. theft, arson, trespassing, vandalism, hate crime, protest-related disturbance, etc.).

Request 4
Any data or notes indicating whether the incident occurred in the context of civil unrest, riots or public disorder.

Please could I have this information provided in an Excel format.

Answer
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when refusing to provide such information (because the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit) to provide you the applicant with a notice which states that fact.

It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 12 of FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case. The ‘appropriate limit’ is currently £600 for central government and £450 for all other public authorities including PSNI. The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity.

Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations states that a public authority can take into account the costs it reasonably expects to incur in carrying out the following permitted activities in complying with the request:

(i) determining whether the information is held;
(ii) locating the information, or a document containing it;
(iii) retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
(iv) extracting the information from a document containing it.

Under those regulations PSNI can calculate the time spent on each of these permitted activities at £25 per hour (thus if the activity(s) takes more than 18 hours PSNI will be in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’).

When a public authority is estimating whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if the conditions laid out in Regulation 5 of the Fees Regulations can be satisfied. Those conditions require the requests to be:

• made by one person, or by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign;
• made for the same or similar information; and
• received by the public authority within any period of 60 consecutive working days.

Regulation 5(2) of the Fees Regulations requires that the requests which are to be aggregated relate “to any extent” to the same or similar information. This is quite a wide test but public authorities should still ensure that the requests meet this requirement.

Enquiries made in relation to your request has identified that retrieval of information to respond to your request would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours as set by the Secretary of State.

Whilst the information you seek is held electronically by the PSNI, it is not held in a format that would allow its retrieval without manual intervention. PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however to extract the data you have sought in your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records – hence putting the request grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA.

Regarding Request 2, there is no field on our recording system that would indicate whether or not a building is a listed building. If this information is held, to retrieve this data would require a manual examination of all relevant records. While some location types can be eliminated (e.g. public/open spaces), it is possible for any structure to be given listed status. Therefore, it is likely that a manual review would include hundreds of thousands of crime records for this time period. It would be grossly over the 18 hour cost limit to retrieve the data you seek in Request 2 alone.

Additionally, regarding Request 4, there is no field on our recording system that would indicate whether an offence took place in the context of civil unrest/public disorder. Again, this would require manual examination of all relevant records. If only recorded crimes where the location type was Church/religious buildings are included, it would require approximately 700 records to be manually reviewed. This would take approximately 90 hours and would therefore add additional time to the overall time for retrieval of the information you seek.

Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, if any part of the request exceeds the cost threshold then the whole request will be in excess of costs and there is no obligation to answer any part of the request. The PSNI have therefore determined that this request for information grossly exceeds the 18 hour cost limit.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter should be considered as a Refusal Notice, and the request has therefore been closed. 

Advice and assistance
You may wish to submit a refined request in order that the cost of complying with your request may be facilitated within the ‘appropriate limit’. In compliance with Section 16 of the Act, we have considered how your request may be refined to bring it under the appropriate limit.

To assist with refining your request, we may be able to provide the following within the appropriate limit:

• The number of recorded offences where the location type was Church/religious building, during the period January 2022 to May 2025.
• A breakdown of recorded offences where the location type was Church/religious building by offence type, during the period January 2022 to May 2025.

Submission of a refined request would be treated as a new request, and considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including consideration of relevant Part II exemptions.