FOI 567/25

REQUEST

1. How many stolen or suspected stolen mobile phones are currently held by the force having been recovered by officers?
2. How many stolen or suspected stolen phones have been recovered by the force in the past five years? If possible, it would be helpful if this data is broken down by year.
3. Of these, how many have successfully been returned to their owners?

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) for property > General > Type >Mobile phones and accessories that have been reported as stolen for the time period 1^st January 2020 – 31^st December 2024 with the classification ‘Recovered by Police. ‘This search retrieved 634 results.

We estimate that it would take a minimum of 3 minutes to interrogate each record to identify whether it relates to a mobile phone and whether or not the phone was successfully returned to the owners.

We therefore estimate it would take in excess of  31 hours to retrieve the 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, I have supplied information relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. This information has been supplied outside of the Freedom of Information Act. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fee’s regulations for the remainder of the request. In relation to Q1 we consulted with our Evidence Management Unit (EMU) who have advised that we do not hold this information.