Illicit vape data

Request Number: FOI/15716

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Serious and Organised Crime

Subject: Illicit vape 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(2) 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
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information for the period 1 January 2023 to the present.

Number of seizures of illicit or counterfeit vapes recorded, by calendar year. Please include:
(a) number of seizure incidents

(b) total number of vape units seized

(c) estimated total retail value

(d) number of premises searched during those seizures.

Request 2
For seizures where the retail source type was recorded, please provide the number of incidents attributed to each type of outlet (e.g., convenience stores, vape specialist shops, supermarkets/large stores, market stalls, or other recorded categories).

Request 3
Number of seizures assessed as linked to organised crime groups (or referred to a regional organised crime unit).

Request 4
Number of prosecutions, cautions, or fixed penalty notices related to illicit/counterfeit vapes, with details of offences charged, outcomes, and sentences.

Request 5
Total value of fines or civil penalties issued to retailers for selling illicit/counterfeit vapes (and illegal tobacco seized alongside vapes), by year.

Request 6
Number of premises subject to closure orders, business suspensions, or similar enforcement actions for selling illicit/counterfeit vapes, including dates of orders.

Request 7
Total recorded costs for handling, storing, and disposing of seized vapes, and the disposal methods used.

Request 8
Number of compliance or underage sales checks involving vapes (run by or with your force), and how many resulted in penalties or referrals to Trading Standards.

Request 9
Number of incidents recorded where counterfeit or illicit vapes were linked to a public-safety incident (e.g. fire, hospitalisation, poisoning).

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 Requests 1 and 2 as to determine if the specific results requested, those relating to illegal vapes, are held would require a keyword search and manual trawl through related but inexplicit PSNI seizure records, both centrally and locally, to confidently and without omission provide the organisations’ answer in response to the questions above. As such this would exceed the legislative cost of 18 hours. The information is not held centrally and to ascertain what information is held would require a manual trawl of electronic records and a number of databases. Due to the recording system the manual trawl alone through a substantial amount of records is estimated by PSNI to be grossly over cost to determine if information is or is not held. For example, for the year 2023- 2024 there are upwards of 200 records, which at 10 minutes per record, would take approximately 33 hours for that year alone.

PSNI have conducted initial searches within a number of relevant branches to ascertain whether they hold the information you have requested.
The business areas when estimating the time taken, has taken into account the following four items:

• Determining if the information is held;
• Locating the information;
• Retrieving the information and
• Extracting the information to be disclosed from the other information.

Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, if a public authority estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to confirm whether or not the requested information is held, under Section 12 (2) of the Act, it does not have to deal with the substance of the request.

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. Unfortunately due to system limitations and the reasoning set out above, we are unable to offer any further refinement for this request. However, to assist, PSNI can advise that we do not hold any information in relation to Requests 3 - 9.