Incidents at asylum accommodation 58/2026

FOI Reference: 58/2026

Request:

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following recorded information held by your force in relation to police incidents at asylum accommodation sites.

This request is strictly limited to the 2025 calendar year and to existing, aggregated data only, in order to remain within the Section 12 cost limit.

Q1 - Incidents involving residents of asylum accommodation (excluding protests) For the period 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025, please provide:

The total number of recorded police incidents at asylum accommodation sites Excluding incidents primarily attributed to protests, demonstrations, or public-order events involving non-residents

This should be based only on existing markers, such as:

• incident type classifications
• subject/offender descriptors
• location-based coding
• flags already used internally
• No manual review of narratives is requested.

Q2 - Incident breakdown (aggregate only) Where held in an existing reportable format, please provide an aggregate breakdown of the incidents above by high-level category, for example:

• Violence against the person
• Sexual offences
• Criminal damage
• Public order (non-protest related)
• Weapons offences
• Drug offences
• Safeguarding / welfare
• Other notifiable offences

Q3 - Arrests and outcomes (aggregate)

For the same 2025 period and same non-protest scope, please provide:

• Total number of arrests arising from these incidents
• Total number of cases submitted to the CPS

Aggregate totals only.

Q4 - Recording and filtering clarification (existence only)

Please confirm:

a) Whether your force records or flags whether an incident at asylum accommodation is:

• resident-related; or
• protest/demonstration-related

b) Whether such a distinction is:

• held in a structured field
• searchable without manual review and
• available for reporting purposes.

If no such distinction exists, please confirm this explicitly.

Clarifications

I am not requesting:

• individual case details
• names or personal data
• narrative logs
• manual file review
• protest-related incidents

This request concerns migrant/resident-related incidents only, using data already held.

Response:

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.

I can confirm that the cost of determining whether any information relative to question 1 of this request is or isn’t held is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond therefore we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12 (2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies. The following exemption has been applied to the whole of the information you have requested:

Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of determining what information is held, if any, relevant to your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the “appropriate level” as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 2982 hours) to comply with your request. The regulations can be located @ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information Department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. Therefore, in order to establish what information, if any, is held in relation to the request would require the individual interrogation of all offences over the time frame specified to identify whether the offender was an asylum seeker or if it mentioned asylum accommodation. It has been established that for the period as specified within the request there are a total 35790 offences that would require researching. It has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 5 minutes to research a single offence for relevance of your request as outlined above, resulting in the following time estimate.

35790 offences @ 5 minutes per offence = 2982 hours

Total of 2982 hours to complete task

Please note that the relevant department has advised that if you are able to provide locations, then they may be able to search on them for related offences.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the WHOLE of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, however with due regard to the time estimate provided above it is unlikely that refining your request will fall under the 18 hours as the same method and format will have to be undertaken. Should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit.

Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.                                                      

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 19/01/2026)