October 29, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Hate Crime and Equality
Request Number: FOI/15904
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Hate Crime and Equality
Subject: Racial and Religious Hate Crime
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/
Question 1
I am requesting the following information under the Freedom of Information Act:
For each month from January 2022 to September 2025 inclusive (i.e. monthly figures), please state how many racial hate crimes were recorded by the police force.
Question 2
Please break down the monthly figures in question 1 by the recorded ethnicity of the victim (where applicable)
Question 3
Please break down the monthly figures in question 1 by the recorded ethnicity of the accused offender (where known)
Question 4
For each month from January 2022 to September 2025 inclusive (i.e. monthly figures), please state how many religious hate crimes were recorded by the police force.
Question 5
Please break down the monthly figures in question 4 by the recorded religion of the victim (where applicable)
Question 6
Please break down the monthly figures in question 4 by the recorded ethnicity of the victim (where applicable)
Question 7
Please break down the monthly figures in question 4 by the recorded ethnicity (not religion) of the accused offender (where known)
Question 8
Please state whether, in its response to questions 1-7, the police force has classified anti-Semitic offences as racial hate crimes, religious hate crimes, or both.
Question 9
Please could the police force outline what level/type of the following details it records/holds within its information systems in relation to racial and religious hate crimes, and how easily retrievable that information is:
a. Location of offences (for "offline” offences)
b. Outcomes of offences (convictions etc)
c. Specific dates of offences
d. Details of offences (i.e. "what happened”)
Duty to assist:
Unlike questions 1-7, question 9 does not ask for the disclosure of statistical data or information about specific offences. Instead, I am asking the police about what type of information it records, under the duty to assist:
I would like the information sent by email in an editable spreadsheet (i.e. not PDF).
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.
Whilst the information you seek in Questions 3 and 7 is held, it is not held in a retrievable format. In the timeframe requested there were approximately 2,000 recorded race hate crimes were a suspect was identified. To determine the ethnicity of an offender it would require manual intervention through all incidents. This is because there can be multiple suspects on one occurrence and there is no direct link between the classification offence (which holds the hate crime motivator flags) and the suspect which carried out the offence. At 5 minutes checking each incident that would be approximately 166 hours work. Your request is grossly over the cost limits set out in 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.
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.
For Q1, Q2, Q4, Q5, -Hate Motivated Incidents and Crimes are published quarterly on the PSNI website, the next bulletin will cover up to September 2025 and will be published on 27th November, please see link.
We may be able to provide a response for Q6
For Q8 - There is no specific hate motivation for Anti-Semitism. A hate crime will be recorded based on the perception of the victim or the investigating officer. A hate crime can be recorded as race, faith/religion – Anti-Jewish, or both.
For Q9- Yes, offence locations are recorded and easily retrieved. Offence results are recorded, information on convictions/prosecutions should be obtained by the Public Prosecution Service and Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunal Service. Each offence must have an offence date and is easily retrieved. For the details of each offence this would require a manual trawl through every incident.
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.