Bicycle Theft (232A/24)
Request
What percentage of all reported crimes were bicycle thefts in each full year of 2023, 2022, 2021. (If it is easier, we are happy for you to provide the total number of crimes and the total number of bicycle thefts for each year, and we can work out the percentage ourselves).
What percentage of all bicycle thefts were electric bikes for the year of 2023?
A breakdown of bicycle thefts in each city covered by West Midlands Police for the year of 2023
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
In respect of the second question regarding electric bikes, we do not have a city or town field, therefore we are unable to filter the data in that way. We are only able to filter the data by Local Policing Area or neighbourhood or by one of the address fields which is generated from the incident address. This field is however populated based on the full address inputted and commas separating the parts of the address. This search will not provide reliable information and would need to be manually reviewed, which due to the number of entries that would need to be checked would exceed the FOI time limit. There are a total of 7149 records, is we allowed 5 minutes per record that would equate to in excess of 590 hours.
The cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.