Thefts From Hospitals (726A/21)
Request
Please could you give me a breakdown of thefts from hospitals in 2018/ 2019 and 2020?
Can you please list:
– The date of the reported theft
– The item stolen
– Its value
– Whether the victim was a patient, visitor, staff member etc
– Their age/ gender
– Any detail regarding the theft itself, such as what happened
– The hospital the item(s) was/ were stolen from
– And the outcome of any police investigation (was anyone charged etc)
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). To locate and retrieve further information regarding the victim, value and the hospital would require a manual review of all relevant records which would exceed the FOI time limit. We have provided information regarding these if recorded. Please note: for some records the age and gender of the victims are not recorded, however for others these fields have been left blank because the ‘victim’ of the crime was the hospital itself e.g. in cases involving theft of hospital equipment.
In respect of the value of the item stolen, the majority of reports leave this blank, or enter the value ‘1’.
Further details regarding the theft would be exempt under S40 of the FOI Act, therefore we have provided the offence type.
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.