August 05, 2025 | Operational Policing, Investigations and Events , Investigations and Operations
Request Number: FOI/15321
Category: Crime/Incident Statistics – Other and Multiple Crime/Incident types
Subject: Complaints & Reports Re Competitions etc
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 (PSNI) 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. We have explained to you below that when PSNI estimates whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if certain conditions are met. In this case those conditions are met and complying with all of your requests would in our estimation exceed that appropriate limit set out in Regulation. We have explained this further below but also we 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:
Request 1
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information: The total number of complaints or reports received by the Police Service of Northern Ireland from 1 January 2023 to the present date regarding competitions, prize draws or similar promotions, including those suspected of being scams, misrepresentation or involving fraudulent practices.
Request 2
For each complaint, where available, please provide:
The month and year the complaint was received
The source of the complaint (e.g. member of the public, referral from another authority)
The name of the company or organisation involved
The location or local authority area in which the alleged incident occurred or was reported from
The number of complaints made about each named company
Any enforcement, investigation or other action taken in response to the complaint
Please provide the information in a spreadsheet
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.
Unfortunately, due to the NFIB (National Fraud Investigation Bureau) fraud codes used, it would not be possible to provide this information in under 18 hours. Whilst a lottery scam has its own NFIB code, all other giveaways and prizes do not. The majority of these types of fraud work by requesting an upfront fee or cost in order for the injured party (IP) to receive their winnings. This is subsequently coded as NFIB1H which is an advance fee fraud. However, there are dozens of advance fee frauds such as the very common text message claiming to be a loved one with a new or borrowed phone requesting an emergency loan or for online ‘jobs’ that request a fee from the IP in advance of receiving their ‘wages.’ As a result, the only way for PSNI to get the exact figure would be to look into each and every serial.
There are 328 advance fee frauds reported since that date and it would take approximately 5 minutes per serial to determine if it is a prize/lottery/competition scam which equates to more than 27 hours for that alone. The second part of the request would take approximately 15 minutes per serial once they are identified and the total amount of time would of course depend on the amount of serials identified.
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.
- Subject to a new request PSNI can advise:
There are 19 lottery frauds reported in the given timescale (NFIB1B is that code). These are lottery only and exclude other types of giveaways, prizes or competitions which you the requester have enquired about. To gather the information requested for each of these serials would take approximately 15 minutes per serial which equates to just under 5 hours so this could be provided in isolation, but would be an extremely incomplete picture as you the requester have requested much more than strict lottery scams.
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.