FOI 858/25
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting the following information regarding fuel theft incidents in your jurisdiction:
1 - The number of reported fuel theft incidents or “bilking” offences (i.e. making off without payment from petrol stations) broken down monthly from January 2020 to the most recent available month in 2025.
2 - If recorded, the estimated total value of fuel stolen each month (or year).
3 - The number of these incidents that resulted in:
- a) A suspect being identified
- b) An arrest
- c) Charges filed
- d) A conviction
4 - The number or proportion of these cases that were closed without a suspect identified or charged.
5 - If recorded, how many incidents involved the use of fake, cloned or unregistered number plates
6 - As part of investigations into fuel theft incidents, does your force routinely request or receive data from any of the following systems (if known):
- a) CCTV surveillance
- b) Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)
- c) Forecourt fuel monitoring or wetstock systems
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) under the Home Office code 49A/53/25: Making off without payment (make off) within the requested time period. This search retrieved 6,340 results.
We estimate it would take around one minute to manually interrogate each occurrence to assess if it is related to fuel theft. Once we have identified if the occurrence is relevant, we estimate it would take a further four to five minutes retrieve all the information you have requested such as the outcome, if the plates were cloned and any data that was received by the requested systems.
We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 581 hours to retrieve the information you have requested.
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. Unfortunately, due to the way in which data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.