Ticket fraud 250/2025

FOI Reference: 250/2025

Request

The purpose of this request is to gather data on complaints received by your police force regarding ticket scams.

Specifically, I am seeking information on the following:

1. The total number of ticket fraud crime reports made to the police force for each of the past five years (from Feb 2020 to Feb 2025)

If held, please provide:

- A distinction between concert and football ticket scams

- The names of the venues identified in each report

- The name of the artist or football team identified in each report

2. The total sum of money lost to the above reported ticket fraud incidents per year for each of the past five years (from Feb 2020 to Feb 2025).

- If not held as a yearly figure, please provide a list of the sum of money lost per ticket fraud incident

If the requested data is not held in a readily searchable or structured format, please provide what is available within the cost and time limits.

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 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 604 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 some of the information in respect of Q1 & Q2 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 it would involve Dyfed Powys Police accessing and manually reviewing 33,648 records.

It has been established that it would take a minimum of 1 minute to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of searching 33,000 records, and a further 5 minutes in respect of 648 records.

The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

33,000 Records x 1 minute per record = 550 hours

648 Records x 5 minutes per record = 54 hours

Time estimate to complete task = 604 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 25/03/2025)