Theft of Motor Vehicles

Request Number: FOI/16041

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Burglary and Theft

Subject: Theft of Motor Vehicles

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/

Question 1
I would like to request the following information regarding vehicle theft in your police force area. Please provide the following, broken down by calendar year for the last three full calendar years (2022, 2023 and 2024). Please also provide information from and 2025 to-date up until 31/09/2025). If data is not available up until then, please specify when the 2025 data runs until.

The total number of recorded incidents of theft of a motor vehicle in your area

Question 2
The total number of arrests made where the principal offence recorded was theft of motor vehicle

Question 3
The top three locations (for example towns, districts, or wards) in your force area with the highest number of recorded motor vehicle thefts each year

Question 4
Of the vehicles reported stolen (theft of motor vehicle), how many were subsequently recovered, broken down by year if available

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.

With regards to Question 4 while PSNI do held this information electronically, to determine whether a recorded theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle offence involved a vehicle stolen and recovered would require a manual examination of each record, as we are unable to provide responses on the basis of the details of vehicles that have been stolen due to how vehicle data is held on PSNI's database.

PSNI can confirm that there were over 4,500 recorded theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle offence and aggravated vehicle taking during the period January 2022 – September 2025, it is estimated to manually examine this number of records would take approximately 600 hours, vastly exceeding the legislative timeframe of 18 hours.

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 can advise that we can answer Questions 1 - 3 within cost, if a newly refined request was to be submitted. Unfortunately, due to system limitations and the reasoning set out above, we are unable to offer any further refinement with regards to Question 4.

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.