Dating App Data

Request Number: FOI/15888

Category: Organisational Information & Performance - Policies

Subject: Dating App Data

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: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information­ regulations/section-12-reguests-where-the-cost-of-compliance-exceeds-the-appropriate-Iimit/

Question 1
For each of the 3 points listed below please provide breakdown by year -2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Please treat each year as a calendar year from Jan-Dec. For 2025 please use Jan-September inclusive. How many offences has your force recorded where the key term "Tinder" has been used? (I.e. where the term Tinder has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)?

Question 2
How many offences has your force recorded where the key term "Hinge" has been used? (I.e. where the term Hinge has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)?

Question 3
How many offences has your force recorded where the key term "Dating app" has been used? (I.e. where the term dating app has been mentioned in the MO field of a crime report)?

Question 4
When providing the data, please can you specify the nature of the crime (e.g. sexual assault) and whether it resulted in a charge (y/n) and whether it resulted in a conviction (y/n)?

Question 5
If you are able to do so within those constraints, could you also supply for each offence:

The sex of the alleged victim.

The age of the alleged victim (This can be divided into age ranges if easier, but should include under 18s as a category).

Whether or not the accused had a previous conviction.

If possible, please send the results in an excel format. Please format the table using columns for years, and rows for each question

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.

The information you seek in your request is not held in a retrievable format and would involve manual intervention. Keyword searches were carried out for reports made in 2022 and 2023 that contained the words ‘Tinder’ ‘Hinge’ and ‘dating app’ in them, a total of 305 reports were located. Each report would need to be manually checked to glean the level of information you are seeking. If it took a minimum of 5 minutes to read each report to establish if it relates to your request, that would require approximately 25 hours of work and that does not include reports made in 2024 and up to September 2025. Your request is grossly over the cost limits set out in FOIA.

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.

We may be able to provide a response if the request is limited to one year.

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.