01/FOI/26/007815/V - Stolen items from residential properties

Request:

1. Stolen property from residential properties

For the period 1 January 2024 to the date this request is processed, please provide data relating to the following categories of property reported as Stolen or Stolen & Recovered from residential properties (private dwellings):

• Jewellery
• Watches
• Ornaments/objects d'art
• Paintings, drawings, tapestries and other artwork

For each category, please provide:

1. The number of items recorded as stolen or stolen and recovered.
2. The total recorded value of those items, where available.
3. A monthly breakdown of the number of items recorded as stolen or stolen and recovered, where readily available.
4. Highest-value stolen items

Please provide details of the 10 highest-value items, where a value has been recorded, reported stolen from residential properties (private dwellings) between 1 January 2024 and the date this request is processed, including:

1. The estimated value of the item.
2. A brief description of the item.
3. The year in which the theft was recorded.

Response:

Humberside Police can confirm we do hold some of the information you requested however due to the way it is held in our systems it is not in an easily retrievable format. Therefore Section 12 of the Act applies.

With regards to questions 1 b. and 2, value of items is not recorded in an extractable format. To obtain value data would involve a manual review of the log for each crime. There was a total of 364 Residential Burglaries where the requested items were stolen between 01/01/2024 and 10/08/2026 (Question 1a). It would take approximately 6 minutes to read through each log which would take approximately 36 hours to read through all the logs and identify the value of the items stolen. To then obtain any data for question 2 would further add to this estimate. This would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours.

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit.

s1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ (18 – hours).

Activities that may be counted within our time estimations are:

• Determining if the information is held;
• Locating the information, or a document containing it;
• Retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
• Extracting the information from a document containing it.

The following have not been included within our calculations:

• The time spent identifying information to be exempted
• The time dedicated to the process of redaction.

Please take this as a refusal notice in accordance with section 17(5) of the Act which states; A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

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 or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.

1a.

A search was conducted for Residential Burglaries between 01/01/2024 and 10/08/2026 (the day before the data was extracted).

To identify the specific items that were stolen it was filtered on the Property Class and a keyword search of the Initial MO for the requested item types. Not all requested item types were identifiable using either methodology, which methodology was used is detailed in the table below.

The data is caveated as the property fields are not a mandatory field and so not all officers will input data in these fields. Amongst all Residential Burglaries between 01/01/2024 and 10/08/2026, 50.1% had nothing recorded in the Property Field.

The table below displays both a Count of Crimes and Count of Items. Count of Crimes is based on a Distinct Count, Count of Items is based on a count under the assumption that if more than one of an item was stolen then it should be recorded on multiple rows, however this is also dependent upon the data that is input by the Officer.

1c.

Below is a monthly breakdown of the requested items stolen, this uses the same Count of Items methodology as Question 1A. We are only able to identify if an item was stolen, we are unable to identify if it was later recovered.

Please note that police forces in the United Kingdom are routinely required to provide information and statistics to government bodies and the recording criteria is set nationally. However, the systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted that for these reasons this force’s response to your questions should not be used for the comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.