Cuckooing 302/2025

FOI Reference: 302/2025

Request

With cuckooing (“exercising control over another person’s dwelling without their consent to enable the dwelling to be used in connection with the commission of specified criminal activity”) set to become a crime under the new Crime and Policing Bill, I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I’m specifically seeking any data you have on:

1. The total number of cuckooing cases reported to your authority between January 2020 and December 2024.
2. The total number of confirmed cases of cuckooing within the same timeframe
3. The number of cuckooing cases investigated or taken further by your authority
4. The number of arrests connected to ‘county lines’ drug offences within the same timeframe

If possible, I would appreciate the data being presented as a month-by-month breakdown for each year in question (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024).

It would also be helpful for the data to be split by towns/areas in a separate table. If providing a full month-by-month breakdown or a separate table would exceed cost or time limits, I would be happy to discuss ways to refine my request. Please let me know how I may adjust it to ensure that it falls within the cost limits of the Act.

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.

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.

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information you have requested. However, we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(1) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Section 12 (1) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(1) states: “…Section 1 (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.”

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect 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 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 22,053 hours) to comply with this part of 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. In light of this and in order to accurately obtain the information relative to your request for the time frame stipulated would involve Dyfed Powys Police accessing and manually reviewing a total of 138,919 records. 

In relation to Q1 we would need to manually review 129,489 records, as there is no specific category on our system that we are able to search for cuckooing specifically. These types of calls would be categorised potentially under one of 6 crime categories on our system, or as a safety/welfare issue initially. It would take a minimum of 10 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of retrieving this data. 

In relation to Q2 – Q4 we would need to manually review 9,430 records, involving all drug crimes for every year, as there is no means of filtering this to establish if ‘cuckooing’ has taken place, as it is not a specific crime, on our crime systems.

It has also been established that it would take a minimum of 3 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of your request. 

The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

Q1

2020          17,910 incidents x 10 mins

2021          22,130 incidents x 10 mins

2022          23,707 incidents x 10 mins

2023          32,712 incidents x 10 mins

2024          33,030 incidents x 10 mins

Total Incidents = 129,489       

129,489 incidents x 10 mins = 21,581 hours

Q2 – Q4

2020 – 2,105 records

2021 – 1,746 records

2022 – 2,087 records

2023 – 1,777 records

2024 – 1,715 records

Total = 9,430 records

9,430 records x 3 minutes = 471.5 hours

Time estimate to complete task = 22,053 hours

In accordance therefore 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, 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 public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant.

It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 03/04/2025)