FOI 369/25 Theft of Fuel at Petrol Stations

Enquiry Reference:  369- 25                                                             

 

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

 

Please tell me:

 

1. How many reports of making off without payment (MOWP) has your force recorded between January 2020 and January 2025? Please break this information down by month and calendar year.

 

Answer

The below table contains the total number of crimes of 053/25 - Making off without payment validated in each month/year.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2020	53	47	43	19	30	29	40	45	30	17	28	33
2021	42	36	32	28	46	42	50	50	43	49	55	47
2022	45	51	44	43	46	51	38	72	67	64	39	51
2023	44	44	53	89	77	81	50	49	59	41	50	42
2024	60	55	73	82	60	47	62	52	32	42	36	43

 

 

2. My understanding is your force may log when a MOWP offence specifically occurs at a petrol station/forecourt. Therefore, over the same period, how many reports has your force recorded relating to people driving off from petrol filling stations without attempting to pay, colloquially known as ‘drive offs’, or driving off without paying for fuel? Please also break this information down on a month-by month and year-by-year basis. If the following addition would not cause this request to exceed the 18-hour time limit, please include a breakdown of how many of these instances related to the theft of petrol, and how many to diesel, each year.

 

Answer

Of the crimes in the first table the below contains all those with the MO location description of either petrol station or gas station. I added in the property tables to see how many specified petrol or diesel but the property common name for this type of theft is General – ‘Fuel - Petrol/Diesel’, we can’t quantify how many of each.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2020	32	23	31	10	21	18	20	22	21	7	20	19
2021	27	25	27	17	24	32	39	37	34	37	48	35
2022	37	40	37	33	37	41	28	50	56	57	29	38
2023	31	34	40	74	66	68	35	30	44	34	39	32
2024	54	51	63	65	56	43	54	36	28	30	29	32

 

3. Over the same period, please provide, if possible, the recorded value of the fuel taken in drive-offs, broken down month-by-month and year-by-year.

Answer

The below table contains the sum of the property value extracted from the ‘property value original’ reported on the crime. These are estimates only.

 

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2020	611.56	184.34	541.38	261.91	232.14	330.57	322.3	204.47	468.41	315.4	362.06	483.83
2021	462.41	593.33	661.37	623.51	731.13	1287.73	1915.46	1357.81	1186.3	1686.01	2784.54	1173.9
2022	1257.5	1287.27	1415.67	1300.37	1339.7	2114.66	867.58	1415.07	1318.16	713	252.17	1816
2023	755.1	913.45	1451.68	2139.94	2978.33	3002.53	1801.26	1266.28	1126.26	473.64	1443.94	928.43
2024	1250.8	2595.97	3172.37	1953.11	1427.97	1980.07	1501.69	1682.24	636.24	615.59	796.53	1189.98

 

4. Please provide a resolution/clear-up report on drive-off offences over the same five years – EG numbers of summons, community resolutions, undetected etc, broken down month-by-month and year-by-year.

Answer

This table contains the closure types by year and month. The table does not include any crimes which are still being investigated.

 

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1: Charged	6	8	3	4	5	5	4	8	3	2	3	3
1: Summonsed/postal requisition	2		1	1	2	1	1	1	2
1A: Alternate offence charged		1			1				1
1A: Alternate offence summonsed/postal requisition						1
4: TIC (taken into consideration)												1
8: Community resolution		1			1	1		1			1	2
10: Police - formal action not in public interest	1	1		1	4	1	2	2			1	2
14: Victim declines/unable to support action to identify offender	2	4	1	5	5	11	6	5	5	4	5	2
15: CPS - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties		1									1
15: Police - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties	17	8	12	13	13	12	13	5	11	7	14	10
16: Victim declines/withdraws support - named suspect identified	13	10	7	4	7	6	11	5	9	10	7	7
18: Investigation complete no suspect identified	139	138	170	168	164	162	139	148	151	141	133	126
20: Other body/agency has investigation primacy										1		1
21: Police - named suspect, investigation not in the public interest	1	1	3	2	2	1			1
22: Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, not in public interest to take further action			1	1								1

 

 

5. Please inform me, if possible, the names of the five petrol stations that reported the most drive-off offences for each of the five years in question, including details of the value of fuel taken from each station each year, broken down year by year.

Answer

Below are the five petrol stations (location common names) with the most crimes recorded however, this isn’t reliable. The table doesn’t take into account misspellings and different ways of describing and the majority of locations were left blank in each of the years.

 

2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
ESSO	TESCO EXPRESS	ESSO	TESCO EXPRESS	TESCO EXPRESS
TESCO EXPRESS	ESSO	TESCO EXPRESS	ESSO	ESSO
SHELL	MORRISONS	TESCO	MORRISONS	SHELL
MORRISONS	SHELL	MORRISONS	SHELL	MORRISONS
SNAX 24 LTD	SNAX 24 LTD	SHELL	TESCO	TESCO

 

Below are the values as stated in the property value original. Again this isn’t reliable data due to data quality issues and are estimates at best. These are the estimated values of the petrol stations with the most crimes not the highest values.

2020		2021		2022		2023		2024
ESSO	415	TESCO EXPRESS	3555	ESSO	3015	TESCO EXPRESS	2064	TESCO EXPRESS	3982
TESCO EXPRESS	486	ESSO	1071	TESCO EXPRESS	1158	ESSO	2360	ESSO	1284
SHELL	304	MORRISONS	1243	TESCO	1652	MORRISONS	1000	SHELL	1566
MORRISONS	221	SHELL	874	MORRISONS	645	SHELL	949	MORRISONS	1211
SNAX 24 LTD	102	SNAX 24 LTD	316	SHELL	874	TESCO	787	TESCO	1347

 

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.

 

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Yours sincerely

Information Rights Decision Maker