Drink spiking 224/2025

FOI Reference: 224/2025

Request

I would like to request the following information as part of my dissertation investigating how drink spiking differentiates from the United Kingdom and other countries.

Can I please have the following numbers relating to:

1.     How many incidents of drink spiking were recorded by your force from the years 2019-2024?

2.     What was the location of the drink spiking incidents from the years 2019-2024?

3.     How many cases of drink spiking resulted in a court case/prosecution from the years 2019-2024?

4.     How many cases from the years 2019-2024 were successful? I.e., was the offender charged?

Could I please have this information broken down into yearly?

Clarification sought

Are you referring to incidents or crimes? Please note an incident is different from a crime.  An incident is a record of contact made to a police force by an individual/member of public (usually via a 999 or 101 call) and a crime is where the threshold has been met for the police force to deem that a criminal offence has occurred as defined by law

Are you referring to those charged to court or found guilty at court?

Clarification received

I am referring to the number of crimes committed. If possible, I would like the numbers for both charged to court and found guilty at court. However, if it is only possible to obtain the information for the number of charged to court that would be very much appreciated.

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 128 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 Q1 – Q4 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 reviewing 766 records, as spiking is not an offence category, we would have to conduct a manual review of all offences containing the key words “spike”, “spiked” or “spiking” to identify whether any involve drink spiking.

It has been established that it would take a minimum of 10 minute to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of searching 766 records.

The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

2019 –     18 records

2020 –     118 records

2021 –     183 records

2022 –     266 records

2023 –     79 + 29 records

2024 –     73 records

Total records = 766

766 records x 10 mins = 128 hours of work.

Time estimate to complete task = 128 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 20/03/2025)