Thefts at NHS Locations (1030A/23)
Request
Please provide a list of theft offences reported to your police force by NHS Trusts or other NHS organisations in each of the financial years of 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, and 2022/23, specifying:
- Which NHS organisation reported the theft
- What item(s) was/were reported as missing or stolen
- The value of said items, in pounds
- The recorded outcome of the case
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).
We do not have a search criterion “NHS trusts” or “NHS organisations”, we can only search for “hospitals”. This of course may retrieve private hospitals, and we would have to check each hospital to see if it is in fact an NHS hospital. Other NHS organisations would not be captured under hospitals and may just be recorded as the name of the building and the street with no reference to its function. This is also very broad as it could include, doctors’ surgeries, dentists, or general office / admin building.
Therefore, every theft recorded for the five-year period would need to be individually assessed to see if it is “NHS”, then we would need to drill down further to locate the stolen item (which can be buried within the depths of the crime), and its value. Ordinarily we could do the outcome of the case, however, as it would exceed the 18 hours for the purposes of the FOI Act, to identify those crimes in the first place this is also unavailable.
In the past 5 years thefts reported at the location “hospitals” are 1517 recorded crimes.
Even if hospitals were an accepted search criterion, then each individual crime would need to be reviewed for the same reasons as above.
1517 crimes x 10 mins = 252 hours
I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act. If you would like to look into refining your request please contact me.
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