August 18, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Alcohol and Drugs
Request Number: FOI/15267
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Alcohol and Drugs
Subject: Drink/Drug Cycling and Motorcycling Incidents
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 1
The total number of reported incidents involving cycling and motorcycling under the influence of alcohol or drugs for each of the past five years (please provide separate yearly breakdowns for bicycles and motorcycles).
Request 2
Of these incidents, how many resulted in arrests, cautions, or penalties being issued? (Please provide separate yearly breakdowns for bicycles and motorcycles.)
Request 3
For each of these incidents, please provide a breakdown by the age and gender of those involved (separately for bicycles and motorcycles, by year).
Please provide the information electronically in spreadsheet or document 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.
PSNI can confirm that while we do hold this information electronically, it is not held in a retrievable manner. We can advise that motorcycles are dealt with under the same drink/drug driving offences as all other vehicles, including cars. We currently do not have vehicle type in our dataset and therefore cannot distinguish between cars and motorcycles. As a result, this information cannot be provided for motorcyclists specifically.
To distinguish if a vehicle was a motorcycle, a manual search would have to be carried out. PSNI can advise that between 1st January 2020 and 31st May 2025 there were 16,459 drink drug driving offences. At approximately 10 minutes per record this would take over 2,763 hours to carry out, vastly exceeding the legislative timeframe of 18 hours.
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.
With regards to Request 1, PSNI can advise that we can provide the number of detections for cycling when unfit through drink or drugs from 2020 – 31st May 2025.
The offence of cycling when unfit through drink or drugs is solely a prosecution offence and therefore the only thing PSNI can provide in relation to Request 2 is the total number of such offences referred for prosecution for cycling when unfit through drink or drugs. This will be the same figure as Request 1.
With regards to Request 3, PSNI can provide a breakdown of cycling when unfit through drink or drugs by age, group and gender.
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.