FOI 983/24 Machinery Theft at Constructions Sites

Dear Sir/Madam,

Enquiry Reference:  983 - 24                                                                        

I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information.  Below is your request and our response.

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from Cleveland Police. Please may you provide me with:

The number of times your police force has been called about a vehicle or machinery theft at a construction site within the last five years (calendar years are fine).

1. a) The MO location description of ‘construction site’ was only in place until 2021 so the analyst had to use ‘building site’. Please note that ‘Machinery and Tools’ is the property description we have included a list of these.

Number of crimes of theft (including burglary) recorded from a construction site or building site where either machinery or tools were recorded as stolen or a stolen vehicle.

Further, the number of times you were called about a vehicle or machinery theft at a construction site and were able to recover the asset in the last five years (calendar years are fine).

If possible, please specify what vehicle or machinery was stolen, within the last five years (calendar years are fine).

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1 (1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Having made enquiries within the Force the field in the case management system for recovery is not mandatory and is rarely completed therefore to ascertain if the asset was recovered would require a manual assessment to retrieve that information.  This would take over 20 minutes per record, and this would take in excess of the appropriate time stipulated by the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer on the 18th Of October 2004, that is, eighteen hours. This falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken.

Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17 of the Freedom of information Act.

In accordance with Section 16 of the Act we have a duty to provide advice and assistance however on this occasion we cannot offer any suggestion on how you could refine this request but as a gesture of good will outside of the act we have provided some information that was collated before it was realised that this would be in excess of the time limit specified for these requests.

Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.

The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.

If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice

Yours sincerely

Information Rights Decision Maker