September 25, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Sexual Offences
Request Number: FOI/15619
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Sexual Offences
Subject: Sexual Related Offences Statistics by Policing District (2015–2025)
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
I would like a breakdown of the number of reported incidents for the following offences:
- Rape
- Sexual Assault
- Causing or Inciting a Child to Engage in Sexual Activity
- Arranging or Facilitating Sexual Offences Against a Child
- Meeting a Child Following Grooming
- Child Grooming
- Child Prostitution and Pornography Offences
- Paying for the Sexual Services of a Child
- Making, Possessing, or Distributing Indecent Images of Children
- Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
- Exploitation for Sexual Purposes
- Causing or Inciting Prostitution for Gain
- Controlling Prostitution for Gain
- Slavery, Servitude, and Forced or Compulsory Labour
- Conspiracy to Commit Sexual Offences
- Organised Crime Offences Linked to Exploitation
Request 1
By calendar year (or financial year if that is how the data is held), for each of the last 10 years (from 2015 to 2025 or the most recent available 10 year period).
Request 2
Broken down by all policing district (e.g. Belfast, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon, etc.).
Request 3
If available, please also indicate how many of these reports led to:
- An arrest
- A charge
- A conviction (if recorded)
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 your request is held on PSNI database, it is not held centrally or in a retrievable format. For example, 106 Modern Slavery includes offences that are not trafficking for sexual exploitation or slavery etc. During the time period requested there are 268 records using the current legislation offence code for Human trafficking, to determine the nature of the trafficking and ascertain which of these 268 records relate to trafficking of a sexual nature would require a manual trawl with each individual case needing to be checked. At 5 minutes checking each case would require approximately 22 hours work. Organised Crime Offences Linked to Exploitation cannot be identified through specific offence codes classifications relevant to the groupings of offences requested. This would also require a manual trawl through incidents to determine if there is a link to organised crime. To identify offences that led to an arrest would also require a manual trawl through records (in excess of 37,500 records) this puts your request grossly over the costs limits set out in FOIA.
The majority of the offences listed in your request are published on a financial year bases, with the latest published information covering each financial year 1998/99-2024/25, see table 15 in the spreadsheet accompanying the police recorded crime financial year update period ending 31st March, this table shows small levels recorded each year for some of the classifications in your request https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/police-recorded-crime-statistics
List of Classifications
Rape – classification 19C-19K Rape
Sexual assault
– classifications 17A/17B Sexual assault on a male, 20A/20B Sexual assault on a female
Causing or Inciting a Child to Engage in Sexual Activity
– classifications 21/22B Sexual activity involving a child under 13 and under 16
Meeting a Child Following Grooming, Child Grooming
– classification 88A Sexual grooming, excluding offences of sexual communication with a child; all offences within 88A Sexual grooming that relate to grooming rather than sexual communication with a child are meeting a child following sexual grooming
Arranging or Facilitating Sexual Offences Against a Child, Child Prostitution and Pornography Offences and Paying for the Sexual Services of a Child
– classification 71 Abuse of children through prostitution and pornography
Making, Possessing, or Distributing Indecent Images of Children
- classification 86 Obscene publications, etc. (sub classification of indecent images relating to children)
Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation and Slavery, Servitude, and Forced or Compulsory Labour
– classification 106 Modern Slavery
Causing or Inciting Prostitution for Gain, Controlling Prostitution for Gain and Exploitation for Sexual Purposes
- classification 24 Exploitation of prostitution
Conspiracy to Commit Sexual Offences – unless specified within the classification description, an offence code identified as conspiracy to commit will be included within the same classification as other forms of that offence, for example substantive, attempt.
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 can offer the number of outcomes administered in each of the last ten financial years for the classifications listed above, Sanction outcomes include charge/summons and cautions, community resolution notices. We can also provide a breakdown by policing district for the complete 10 year period, based on the published classifications identified above. Convictions are also published by the Department of Justice.
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.