Speeding Offences & Vehicle Crime Data

Request Number: FOI/15251

Category: Roads Policing and Safety Cameras – Investigations and Operations

Subject: Speeding Offences & Vehicle 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) 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/

Request 1
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting the following data for the calendar years 2019 to 2024.
Speeding Offences and Fines. Please provide the following for each year between 2019 and 2024:
a) The number of speeding offences your force recorded (e.g., fixed and mobile camera-detected and officer-issued offences under Section 89 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984).
b) The total value of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued or paid, if held. (If payment data is not held, the number of FPNs issued alone is sufficient.)
c) If available:
- A breakdown of speeding offences by day of the week, and/or
- Time of day (e.g. by hourly bands or AM/PM).
Please provide whatever granularity is available; if only the date is held, that's still helpful.

Request 2 
Theft from Motor Vehicles – Wheels & Tyres. Please provide the following for each year between 2019 and 2024:
a) The number of "theft from a motor vehicle” offences where wheels and/or tyres were reported stolen. This includes full wheel assemblies, individual tyres, or alloy wheels.
b) If available, a monthly breakdown of these offences.
c) If held, provide details of the most commonly stolen parts/items reported in "theft from motor vehicle” offences (e.g., tyres, wheels, catalytic converters, etc.).
If wheel or tyre thefts are not separately coded, please advise whether keyword search of MO/descriptive fields is possible, or provide the nearest equivalent data.
If your force uses different offence codes or terminology, please respond using the closest equivalent data available.
If fulfilling the full request would exceed the cost/time limit under Section 12, please prioritise:
- Total annual speeding offence counts
- Number of tyre/wheel thefts
- Total value of speeding fines (if held)
Data in spreadsheet format (e.g. Excel or CSV) is preferred, with years in separate columns where possible.

Answers 1- 2 
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.

With regards to requests 2a and 2b while there is a property type of ‘Vehicle parts & accessories’, none of the subtypes relate specifically to wheels/tyres.  Therefore to determine the number of theft from a vehicle offences where wheels or tyres were stolen would require a manual examination of all relevant records.  Of the ‘Vehicle parts & accessories’ subtypes, ‘Vehicle Parts’, ‘Other Vehicle Parts and Accessories’ and those items where no additional subtype have been selected would all need to be checked.  Between January 2019 and December 2024 there were 474 such records.  To manually examine this many records would take around 60 hours and would therefore be over cost.

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.

• PSNI may be able to provide a response to request 1 and request 2c within the legislative time frame.

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.