Tool Theft

Request: FOI/13611

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Theft

Subject: Tool Theft

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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Request
Please could I request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act. With tradespeople across the UK affected by tool theft I am looking to find:

Request 1
The number of tool marking events that your police force has supported in the following calendar years: 2024 and 2023?

Request 2a
How many suspected stolen tools has your police force seized and/or catalogued in the following calendar years: 2024 and 2023?

Request 2b
How many of these tools has your police force manage to reunite with their owners in the following calendar years: 2024 and 2023

Request 3
How many arrests has your police force made for offences relating tool theft in the following calendar years: 2024 and 2023?

NB: The reference to "tools" above relates to those commonly used by tradespeople. This includes, but is not limited to, drills and impact drivers, saws, angle grinders, multi-tools, nail guns,
generators, disc cutters, garden power tools, and similar equipment.

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.

Both Requests 2 and 3 bring the request over cost.

Request 2 - Whilst the information is held electronically, it is not held centrally, nor is it retrievable via automated processes. Additionally, there is no specific offence code for 'tool theft'. In order to retrieve the requested information, a manual examination of every incident categorised as 'theft' for the requested date range would need to be undertaken. For 2024 alone, and for 1 district (of which there are 11 total), this would take 150 hours based on a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per incident.

Request 3 - Whilst the information is held electronically, there is no specific offence code for tool theft, therefore all arrests for burglary, robbery and theft offences would need to be manually examined to determine whether the circumstances involved stolen tools. There were in excess of 3,500 custody records in 2023 and 2024 that included an arrest for the generic 'theft' offence. To manually examine this many records would be over cost (over 125 hours), and it would likely be necessary to read through other acquisitive offences too, further extending the time required.

Therefore, the above requests, both separately and combined, bring the request in full 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.

Request 1 - This information is not held. Numerous crime prevention events take place throughout the year, but none are targeted specifically towards 'tools'.

Requests 2a and 2b - PSNI can provide a response on the basis of property described as ‘Machinery or tools’ and classified as both ‘Stolen’ and ‘Recovered by Police’ as part of a recorded burglary, robbery or theft offences during 2023-24 – but note that
this will be very limited.

PSNI can provide more accurate statistics based on reported incidents of tool theft, rather than the number of tools stolen/reunited with their owners.

Request 3 - Unfortunately, due to the way in which the information is stored, we are unable to provide refinement for this request.

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.