FOI 1093/26
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information relating to vehicle theft offences recorded by your force.
Please provide the following information covering the most recent 12-month period for which complete data is available:
- The total number of vehicle thefts recorded.
- The number of vehicle thefts identified as involving keyless entry, relay attack, or any equivalent offence code or marker used to identify keyless vehicle thefts (where separately recorded).
- The vehicle recovery rate for the same period (or, if recovery rate is not routinely recorded, the number of stolen vehicles recovered).
RESPONSE
Your request for information has now been considered, and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query, therefore, to accurately answer your request we would need to individually interrogate all crimes recorded under the offence groups of ‘Aggravated vehicle taking’ and ‘Theft or unauthorised taking of motor vehicle’ recorded between the 1st September 2025 and 1st September 2026. This search retrieved 2,177 records.
We estimate it would take around 5 minutes to interrogate each occurrence to establish the method of entry as we have no specific marker or flag to indicate if the theft involved keyless entry.
We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 181 hours.
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. If you were to remove Q2 we may be able to assist with the remainder of your request.