FOI 510/25
REQUEST
I would be grateful if you could provide the following information for each of the past three calendar years: 2022, 2023, and 2024. If possible, please complete the attached Excel form. If now, please respond to the questions as listed below:
- Total Number of Tool Theft Cases
- How many reports of tool theft have been recorded annually in your jurisdiction?
- Of these, how many involved thefts from vehicles, homes, and commercial premises?
- Investigation & Case Closure Rates
- What is the average length of time spent investigating each reported tool theft case before it is closed?
- How many tool theft cases were closed within the following timeframes:
- 24 hours
- 48 hours
- One week
- One month
- How many cases remain open beyond one month?
- Arrests, Charges, and Convictions
- How many tool theft cases resulted in an arrest each year?
- How many led to formal charges?
- How many resulted in a conviction?
- Recovery of Stolen Tools
- How many cases resulted in the recovery of stolen tools?
- What percentage of recovered tools were returned to their original owners?
- Police Resources & Prioritisation
- How many officers (FTE) are assigned to investigate tool theft cases?
- Are tool theft cases given a specific priority level compared to other property crimes?
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.
Unfortunately, the data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your request. A search has therefore been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) where ‘Theft and Handling’ has been selected as the occurrence type and where ‘South Wales’ has been selected as the owning agency between 1st January 2024 to 31st December 2024.
This search retrieved 31,322 results.
We estimate that it would take approximately one minute to individually interrogate each occurrence in order to establish if they relate to tool theft.
We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 522 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. Keyword searches are not routinely carried out by South Wales Police as the results they retrieve are not reliable. These searches will only bring back results where the chosen keyword is contained within the occurrence summary or Modus Operandi (MO). These are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation. However, if the applicant specifically asks for keyword searches to be conducted and provides the keywords for us to search on, we may be able to assist.