2022/24963 - Theft reports of lead and copper building materials

REQUEST

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I’d like to make a request regarding information on reports of theft of building materials - specifically lead and copper.

Specifically, I’d like to request the number of reports of theft where lead and/or copper materials have been stolen from the time period 2017 to 2022 (or if 2022 data is not available then data from 2017 - 2021 would be great).

Please could you also show the town/city where the theft has taken place, and the type of building or site that the material was stolen from (eg. a church, residential property, construction site).

Finally, in each reported case please advise whether any arrests were made and if so, whether there were any prosecutions.

RESPONSE

There were a total of 441 offences in the ‘All other theft’ offence group where the term ‘copper’ and/or ‘lead’ was found within the crime summary from 2017 up until 07/03/2022. This information is based off recorded date. The offences included are listed below:

THEFT IF NOT CLASSIFIED ELSEWHERE (THEFT NON SPECIFIC)

THEFT BY AN EMPLOYEE

THEFT IN A DWELLING OTHER THAN FROM AUTOMATIC MACHINE OR METER.

BLACKMAIL (THEFT ACT S.21)

To provide information regarding the type of building or site that the material was stolen from, a manual trawl would need to be completed. It would take 5 minutes per record, and with 441 records, it would take 36.75 hours which is over the 18-hour limit. Therefore, this part of the request is exempt.

Section 12 – Excess Cost

The exemption applicable to the information you have requested for this question can be found at Section 12(1) of the Act and this refusal notice is issued under Section 17.

Section 12(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.” 

In the case of a police force, the appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e., 18 hours). Gwent Police would have to conduct a manual search to find and extract the information for this question. This would take more than 18 hours of staff time therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption is engaged.

The tables below provide the number of thefts of this type in each Neighbourhood. The outcomes of these offences have also been provided.

Please note that prosecution data can be sought from the courts.