Stats re barbers, hairdressers, etc. 978/2025

FOI Reference:978/2025

Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting the following aggregated statistical information for your police force area, covering the period 1 January 2019 - present.

For businesses described as "barbers", "hairdressers", "hair salons", "nail bars/salons", or "beauty salons" (keyword search acceptable), please provide:

The total number of raids, operations, or enforcement actions involving these business types.

The total number of arrests made.

The total number of charges brought.

The total value of cash or assets seized (if recorded in aggregated form).

The total number of referrals made to HMRC, NCA, or Immigration Enforcement.

Notes to reduce burden:

I am requesting aggregated totals only. No case files, personal data, or detailed reports are sought.

Please provide this information only where already held in recorded form (e.g. management statistics, keyword-coded returns, annual reports).

If providing the full period (2019-present) is likely to exceed the Section 12 cost limit, please provide figures for 2022-present in the first instance and indicate whether earlier data can be retrieved within cost.

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. Between 6,062 hrs– 15,155 hrs) 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 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 181,871 records, in order to manually review all our intelligence logs. Each log would take approximately 2 to 5 minutes to review. I have provided the number of logs for the calendar years in question below.

The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

I have provided the number of logs for the calendar years in question below:-

2019 – 30,806

2020 – 33,767

2021 – 30,596

2022 – 34,565

2023 – 22,553

2024 – 16,716

2025 to 30/09/2025 – 12,868

Total Intelligence logs – 181,871

181,871 x 2 mins per record = 6,062 hrs

181,871 x 5 mins per record = 15,155 hrs

Time estimate to complete whole task = Between 6,062 hrs– 15,155 hrs

Please note:

Figures for 2022-present would also exceed the 18hrs to comply with your request, as these would take between 2,890hrs – 7,225hrs.

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.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 30/10/2025)