Fuel Theft and Drive-Offs at Petrol Stations

Request Number: FOI/15099

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics – Burglary and Theft

Subject: Fuel Theft and Drive-Offs at Petrol Stations

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 number of reported fuel theft incidents or "bilking” offences (i.e. making off without payment from petrol stations) broken down monthly from January 2020 to the most recent available month in 2025.

Request 2
If recorded, the estimated total value of fuel stolen each month (or year).

Request 3
The number of these incidents that resulted in:
a) A suspect being identified
b) An arrest
c) Charges filed
d) A conviction

Request 4
The number or proportion of these cases that were closed without a suspect identified or charged.

Request 5
If recorded, how many incidents involved the use of fake, cloned or unregistered number plates

Request 6
As part of investigations into fuel theft incidents, does your force routinely request or receive data from any of the following systems (if known):
a) CCTV surveillance
b) Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)
c) Forecourt fuel monitoring or wetstock systems

I would appreciate it if the information could be provided in a digital format, such as a spreadsheet (.xls/.csv) or document, for ease of analysis.
If any of the above data is only available in financial years (rather than calendar years), please make this clear and provide the information in that format instead.

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.

With regards to Request 5 PSNI can confirm that while we do hold this information electronically, it is not held in a retrievable manner. To determine whether an offence involved the use of fake/cloned license plates would require a manual trawl of each individual offence. We can further advise that there are approximately 350 'other theft' offences where the location was 'Petrol Station' and property described as 'Petrol Diesel' was classified as 'stolen'. At 10 minutes per record, it is estimated to take around 60 hours to manually examine 350 records, 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. 

Request 1 - PSNI can provide a table that shows the number of recorded 'Making Off Without Payment' and 'Other Theft' offences where the location was described as 'Petrol Station' and where property described as 'Petrol/Diesel' was classified as 'stolen', during the period 1st January 2020 and 31st May 2025, broken down by month and year.

Request 2 - PSNI can provide provide a data file based on the above offences which will include a number of property fields which may hold information on the value of petrol/diesel that was stolen.

Requests 3/4 - PSNI would be able to respond to these requests with a response based on the currently assigned outcome.

Request 5 - Unfortunately due to system limitations and the reasoning set out further above, we are unable to offer any refinement for this request.

Request 6 - PSNI can advise that we would be able to answer this within cost, however it may possibly be subject to exemptions.

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.