FOI 344/25

REQUEST

1. How many incidences of tractor theft occurred in your area in: 

2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

2. How many incidences of livestock theft occurred in your area in: 

2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

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 crime type Theft and Handling within the requested time frame. This search retrieved 127,254 results.

We estimate that it would take approximately one minute to interrogate each occurrence to identify whether it is related to tractor theft or livestock theft.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of 2,125 hours to comply with 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. If you were to request a keyword search for types of livestock e.g. sheep, cow etc then we may be able to assist you with your request. Please note keyword searches are not carried out routinely as they are not reliable, they will only bring back records where the chosen keyword(s) is present within the MO Description / Incident Summary of an investigation; these are limited free text fields and do not contain all information in relation to an investigation.