Burglaries 2017 – 2019 (1455/20)
Request
I would like to request the 20 streets which had the most burglaries in the West Midlands over the last three years.
I would like to know how many burglaries took place in the streets over that period of time and the value of the goods taken please.
I would also like to know how many of these burglaries were solved by West Midlands Police i.e sentence passed to an offender.
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 enclosed attached file 1455_attachment). 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.
May I also draw your attention to the following website which may also assist you, but would not answer all of your queries:
REASON FOR DECISION
West Midlands Police have provided information relating to burglaries over the last 3 years (plus those to date in 2020). The search could be viewed two different ways. The % search would have recovered the top 20% based on volume at one location ie actual address. This however would not have given a true reflection in regards to the remainder of said street and only returned a portion of burglaries.
For this reason the search has been based on the actual street ie; the number of burglaries in a street. The search has been completed for those streets with 10 or more burglaries in the street recorded over the stated time parameter. This has returned 51 streets in total, these results have all been left for you to view as it gives a better reflection of the data, as many of the streets share the same total figure (1455_attachment -TABLE A).
In relation to the value of the goods and the burglaries that were solved / sentences passed to offender. These searches would exceed the cost element as our data is not organised in such a way for us to recover the information. Every individual record would need to be assessed in order to locate the value of goods, and the sentence passed to the offender would require further detailed investigation. However, West Midlands Police have provided the outcomes of the crimes that have been listed in (1455_attachment TABLE A), these can be seen in (1455_attachment TABLE B).
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).