April 24, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Hate Crime and Equality
Request Number: FOI/14305
Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Hate Crime and Equality
Subject: Transgender hate crime statistics
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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf
Request Details
I'm getting in touch to make a formal FOI request regarding anti transgender hate crimes recorded by this police force, and the number of attempted prosecutions for those recorded hate crimes, in the past 10 years. Please can I request the data for the following for the dates 01.01.2014 to 31.12.2024 inclusive:
Request 1
The number of transgender hate crimes reported per year from 2014 to 2024 inclusive
Request 2
The number of transgender hate crimes referred to the PPS for prosecution, per year from 2014 to 2024 inclusive
Request 3
The number of transgender hate crimes that resulted in no further action, reported per year from 2014 to 2024 inclusive
Request 4
The details of any police policies or initiatives to increase the detection and or prosecution of hate crimes against transgender people in NI
Request 5
The details of any police policies or initiatives involving outreach to transgender communities or trans advocacy groups in NI
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.
The information you seek in Request 2 is not held centrally and is not in a format that would allow its retrieval without manual intervention. PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however to extract the data you have sought in your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records and databases – hence putting the request over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA.
To retrieve the number of hate crimes referred to the PPS for prosecution, within the date range provided, would require a manual review of 281 relevant occurrences. Each of these occurrences and any relevant attachments would need to be reviewed to establish if a referral had been made for prosecution. Due to the large amount of records that would require a review to answer this request, it has been estimated that this request would exceed the 18 hour cost limit.
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 may be able to provide a response to Requests 4 and 5 within the appropriate limit.
While we cannot provide any refinement that would bring Request 2 under the appropriate limit, we can advise Public Prosecution Service produce statistics on the number of case files with a hate motivation that they receive from the PSNI. You can find this by following the link below:
https://www.ppsni.gov.uk/thematic-bulletins-hate-crime
Additionally, in regards to Requests 1 and 3, the information below may assist in retrieving the information you seek:
- The number of offences with a transgender identity hate motivation for each financial year from 2006/07 – 2023/24 is published in the spreadsheet accompanying our annual Trends in Hate Motivated Incidents and Crimes Recorded by the Police in Northern Ireland bulletin. In addition, the number of offences with a transgender identity hate motivation for the previous 24 months is available in the spreadsheet which accompanies our quarterly Hate Motivated Incidents and Crimes bulletin. The most recent bulletin covers up to 31st December 2024. Both of these publications are available on the PSNI website:
https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/hate-motivation-statistics - Information on the currently assigned outcome for all crimes with a transgender identity motivation from 2015/15 – 2023/24 is published in Table 5.1 of the spreadsheet accompanying our annual Outcomes of Crimes Recorded by the Police in Northern Ireland bulletin. This is available on the PSNI website:
https://www.psni.police.uk/about-us/our-publications-and-reports/official-statistics/police-recorded-crime-statistics
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.