June 10, 2025 | Operational Policing, Investigations and Events , Investigations and Operations
Request Number: FOI/14685
Category: Crime/Incident Statistics – Other and Multiple Crime/Incident types
Subject: Reports of Unidentified Phenomena
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 (PSNI) 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. We have explained to you below that when PSNI estimates whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if certain conditions are met. In this case those conditions are met and complying with all of your requests would in our estimation exceed that appropriate limit set out in Regulation. We have explained this further below but also we 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 (2) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
Request 1
Reports of Unidentified Phenomena:
All reports—whether from the public, police officers, or external agencies—received by PSNI relating to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs), or Other unexplained airborne or underwater phenomena.
Please include:
Date and time of each report,
Location of the reported incident,
Description or summary of the phenomena,
Whether a follow-up investigation occurred,
Whether an explanation (natural or man-made) was subsequently identified.
Request 2
Internal Analysis or Assessment Documents:
Copies of any internal Briefing notes, analytical summaries, or situation reports, Memos, emails, or communications within PSNI or between PSNI and external agencies (e.g., MoD, RAF, Coastguard, Civil Aviation Authority),
Statistical summaries or case reviews of such incidents.
Please include records even where the conclusion was that the phenomenon was ultimately explainable, misidentified, or posed no threat.
Request 3
Internal Policy, Reporting Procedures, and Designated Roles::
Any documentation (including guidance notes, training materials, protocols, or standard operating procedures) concerning how PSNI officers are expected to Record, escalate, or respond to sightings of UAP/UFO/USO, Engage with other bodies (such as the Ministry of Defence, Civil Aviation Authority, or UK Space Agency), Identify any roles or designations (formally or informally) responsible for handling such reports. In particular, if the term \
Clarification requested:
Can you please supply dates to which your request relates to and also can you advise what you meant with the following:-
Identify any roles or designations (formally or informally) responsible for handling such reports.
In particular, if the term \
We believe the last part of your request has been cut off.
Clarification received:
Thank you for your response. In relation to your request for clarification, I can confirm the following:
Date Range: The request relates to the period from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2023
Clarification on Cut-Off Sentence: It appears the final part of my request was inadvertently cut off. I had intended to ask:
"Identify any roles or designations (formally or informally) responsible for handling such reports.
To assist your search, and in case helpful for keyword-based retrieval from logs, incident reports, internal memos, or briefing documents, I would be grateful if you could search using terms such as:
"UFO”
"UAP”
"USO”
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon”
"Unexplained aerial”
"Unidentified aircraft”
"Unusual lights”
"Unidentified submerged object”
"Aviation incident” or "Airspace breach” (if categorised differently)
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(2) 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.
PSNI can advise that it will take over 18 hours to determine what information we might even hold relevant to your request for the time period 1st January 2018 to 31 December 2023, especially in relation to any briefing notes, memos, e mails etc. With specific regard to Request 1 we can advise that a key word search of the terms that you provided in your clarification for the requested time period returned 4492 results. To manually examine each of these would require 5 minutes per call would take in excess of 370 hours for Request 1 alone.
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, but are unable to provide a refinement.