August 27, 2025 | Roads Policing and Safety Cameras , Traffic Offences
Request Number: FOI/15391
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics – Area Crime Statistics
Subject: Incidents Involving Mopeds with L Plates
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:
Request
1. Please provide the number of crime or incident reports recorded by your force in which mopeds with L plates are specifically mentioned, for each of the past five calendar years, please provide the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
2: Where available, please provide a breakdown by:
i. Offence type of crime or incident reports recorded by your force in which mopeds with L plates are specifically mentioned for:
Theft - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Assault - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Dangerous driving - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Driving without a licence - please provide both the proportion and number of the offences for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
ii.) whether the moped involved in the offences relating to Question 2, i.) Was recorded as a suspect vehicle, a stolen vehicle, or otherwise involved:
Suspect vehicle - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Stolen vehicle - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Otherwise involved - please provide both the proportion and number of records for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
If this request exceeds the appropriate cost limit, please advise how it may be refined to bring it within the limit.
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 the information requested, although held electronically on PSNI’s database, is not held in a format that extracts the information without manual examination of all the relevant records for the requested time period. To determine whether a moped and the presence of an L plate was involved in a recorded crime would be through manual examination of the records. Between 2019 and 2024 there were approximately 120,000 theft offences, 3,000 robbery offences. 180,000 assault offences, 3,000 dangerous driving offences and approximately 2,500 driving license offences which would need to be manually examined. To manually examine approximately 300,000 records would take approximately 37,000 hours. This puts the request grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the 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.