Drive Off Petrol & Diesel Theft

Request: FOI/00013458

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Theft

Subject: Drive Off Petrol & Diesel Theft

Your request for information has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Act we can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold information to which your request relates. The decision has been taken to disclose the following.

Request 1

Could I please have the statistics for petrol and diesel thefts in Northern Ireland for each of the years from 2019-2023

Clarification sought:
Can you please clarify if your request is asking for all petrol and diesel thefts or only those petrol and diesel thefts that have been committed as part of a making off without payment offence (drive off).

Clarification received:
I would like the stats for "drive off" thefts for petrol and diesel please.

Answer
The table provided is based on all recorded 'Making Off Without Payment' (MOWP) offences where the location was described as 'Petrol Station' and where property described as 'Petrol/Diesel' was classified as stolen, during the period 2019 - 2023.

A MOWP offence will be recorded when the suspect makes no attempt to pay for the fuel prior to leaving the premises. 

However, if it is believed that the suspect has shown intent to steal before attending the premises to take the fuel (e.g. they have covered the license plate, or the suspect has repeatedly driven off without paying) then under these circumstances an offence of 'Other Theft' would be recorded. 

Finally, if the suspect pays for other items (e.g. a coffee) but denies having taken any fuel when they have, this would be recorded as 'Fraud'.  Therefore the full range of circumstance where a suspect has taken fuel from a petrol station will not be covered by the table below.

Please see the following footnote in relation to 'Making Off Without Payment' offences in our recorded crime bulletins, which provides vital background to levels of MOWP offences:

“From April 2014 a change was introduced in the Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) making it more difficult for crimes of making off without payment (MOWP) to meet the criteria allowing offences to be removed from the crime figures (i.e. for the crime to be cancelled). This may have contributed to the increase seen in this classification between 2013/14 and 2014/15. Such cancellations occur mainly where police intervention confirms there are no aggravating factors present (e.g. false registration plate) and there is no intent to avoid payment.

PSNI worked with the Petrol Retailers Association and Retail NI to introduce a pilot scheme (March 2017) where the petrol station deals with non-payment of fuel through the Civil Debt Recovery process, allowing police to focus on those who are deliberately seeking to avoid paying for their fuel. Where a petrol station in the pilot area makes a report of MOWP to police this is still recorded as an offence as per HOCR guidance. Once police confirm no aggravating factors exist, there is no additional requirement for police intervention; however the strict cancellation criteria in the HOCR means that it is not possible to cancel such MOWP reports leading to an increase in the number of these offences remaining recorded. This pilot scheme was extended to all policing districts in March 2018. A recent audit of crime recording resulted in clearer guidance and a greater number of reports which may have been recorded as a Making off without Payment offence being recorded by Action Fraud. This has resulted in fewer Making off without Payment offences recorded from October 2020.”

Please Note:  This information is based on data extracted from a live system and may be subject to change.  It is dependent on the information having been input into the system in such a way as to identify those records that are relevant.