June 05, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Arrests
Request Number: FOI/14551
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Arrests
Subject: Scramblers crime 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). 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 to determine if Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) holds or does not hold the information you seek. 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
How many arrests have been made across Northern Ireland in relation to the illegal use of scramblers for the following years
a) Jan 2019-Dec 2019
b) Jan 2020-Dec 2020
c) Jan 2021-Dec 2021
d) Jan 2022-Dec 2022
e) Jan 2023-Dec 2023
f) Jan 2024-Dec 2024
g) Jan 2025-March 2025
Request 2
For the same time periods, how many scramblers have been seized by the PSNI across Northern Ireland due to illegal use?
Request 3
For the same time period, how many incidents have the PSNI responded to regarding the illegal use of scramblers?
Request 4
For the same time period, how many convictions have there been regarding the illegal use of scramblers?
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:
■ Regarding Request 1 it would take PSNI over 18 hours to determine what information we even hold regarding how many arrests have been made across Northern Ireland in relation to the illegal use of scrambler. There are circa 25,000 arrests per year. To determine how many involved the illegal use of scramblers would require a manual trawl of these arrests. At even a nominal 3 minutes per arrest would equate to 1,250 hours for one calendar year alone and far in excess of the 18 hour cost limit.
■ Re Request 2 regarding seizures of scrambles we can advise that any vehicle recovered by police is done so by incident type e.g. RTC/Abandoned/Stolen etc, consequently to determine if any seized vehicle is a scrambler will require a manual trawl of all vehicles recovered by police – circa 8,000 annually this will add to the over cost above for Request 1.
■ Re Request 3 how many incidents have the PSNI responded to regarding the illegal use of scramblers. We consider by this that you specifically mean where officers have been assigned to investigate a report – i.e. response officers. Regarding this a check was made on PSNI systems using the phrasing “scrambler or scramblers”, gives the following
2019 – 671
2020 – 1775
2021 – 1718
2022 – 1606
2023 – 1924
2024 – 1744
2025 (up to 31/03/25) – 511
A manual check of each record would be required to determine if they meet the criteria of “illegal use of scramblers”. At an estimated 5 minutes per check this would total 789 hours.
■ Re Request 4 regarding how many convictions have there been regarding the illegal use of scramblers we can advise that there are no specific motoring or criminal offences in relation to scramblers. They are dealt with under generic motoring/other offences. Consequently this too would require a manual trawl of the 170,729 referrals for prosecutions between 1st January 2019 and 28th February 2025 alone, again adding to the overcost for Request 1.
■ An 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.