FOI 993/25

Request

I am writing under the FOI Act to request information regarding investigations into the sale of illicit weight loss jabs in your area. Please could you tell me:

1. Between July 2020 and July 2025 how many investigations have been launched into the alleged sale of illicit weight loss jabs? Please break this down by year.
2. Of these, how many have resulted in a) arrests and b) charges? Please break down by year and outcome.
3. Of these, if you are able to, please detail whether jabs were being sold online or in stores. 

Response 

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.

In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.

A search has been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) for all occurrences recorded under the occurrent type ‘CR31 Drugs’ where ‘South Wales’ is selected as the owning agency between 1^st July 2020 and 1^st July 2025.

This search retrieved 22,517 results.

We estimate that it would take approximately 2 minutes to individually interrogate each occurrence in order to establish their relevance.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 750 hours to answer the first part of your request.

It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.

If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.

Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. Whilst we do not routinely conduct keyword searches due to the inaccuracies of the figures these searches retrieve, if the applicant specifically asks for keyword searches to be conducted and provides keywords for us to search on, we may be able to assist.