September 25, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Calls for Service (999/101/Response Times)
Request Number: FOI/15618
Category: Operational policing, Investigations and Events – Investigations and Operations
Subject: Request for Records – Ordnance Recovery Information and PSNI Calls regarding in Lough Neagh
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
I am seeking information under the Freedom of Information Act (or other applicable access-to-information provisions) on ordnance finds and disposal operations in and around Lough Neagh and the number of public nuisance reports filed in relation to the freshwater lake.
Specifically, I request:
The number and nature of call-outs to suspected munitions in or around Lough Neagh since 1945
Request 2
Any records indicating whether these items were wartime munitions or related to deliberate disposal in the lough.
Request 3
Any reports summarising risks associated with unexploded ordnance in Lough Neagh.
Request 4
Also any reports to the PSNI relating to public nuisance offences in relation to Lough Neagh since 2023- A summary of the numbers of calls and actions taken, would be greatly appreciated.
I am happy to accept summary data or redacted reports where necessary.
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.
To obtain the information you seek in your request would require a manual trawl through all incidents reported to the policing districts that cover the areas that surround Lough Neagh. In R1, R2 and R3 PSNI would not retain records as far back as 1945 and recent years would involve manual trawls through paper records and records held electronically. As Lough Neagh does not have a specific address it would require a check through all incidents reported in each area. For R4 in Antrim area alone they have approximately 1500 serials per month, if it took one minute to check each serial to determine if it relates to your request that would be 1,500 minutes (25 hours) this puts your request grossly over the cost limits set out in FOIA. Please note; www.police.uk has a crime map that details some types of crime, while the figures may not be up to date, it would possibly show ASB incidents in a given area, however it would not provide a breakdown.
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.
We are unable to offer a refinement.