FOI 597/25

REQUEST

1. For the calendar years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, and the current year 2025 so far, please provide the number of reported thefts or robberies involving mobile phones stolen by offenders on mopeds, motorbikes, pedal cycles, e-scooters or e-bikes. These are sometimes referred to as “snatch thefts” or “rob-and-run” crimes.
2. For each of these incidents (if held), please provide:
• The age and gender of the victim.
• The age and gender of the suspect (if known or recorded).
• The approximate location of the offence, ideally broken down by city, town, village, or borough (for London boroughs in particular).

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 property search has been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) for ‘personal communication devices’, further filtered to ‘Mobile Phone and Accessories’ that have been classified as ‘Stolen’ where the ‘Agency’ is selected as ‘South Wales’ within the request time frame. This search retrieved 1355 results

We estimate it would take two minutes to interrogate each offence to see if the device was stolen by offenders on mopeds, motorbikes, pedal cycles, e-scooters or e-bikes.

We therefore estimate this would take 45 hours to retrieve this information.

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.