FOI 0968-2025/26- Stolen property recovered from car boot sales

Request:

Q1. In the years 2020 - 2021, 2021 - 2022, 2022 - 2023, 2023 - 2024, 2024 - 2025, how many times did officers from your force recover stolen property from car boot sales. Please breakdown by 1. Financial year 2. Property recovered (e.g. bicycles, tools, electronics, vehicles, other) and 3. Location of car boot sale.

Q2. In the years 2020 - 2021, 2021 - 2022, 2022 - 2023, 2023 - 2024, 2024 - 2025, how many arrests or charges arose from recoveries of stolen goods at car boot sales during this period. Please breakdown by 1. Financial year 2. Arrest or charge.

Q3. Please provide any policy documents or standard operating procedures currently in force that relate specifically to policing car boot sales for stolen goods.

Response: 

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

As the location of seizure is recorded on the exhibit label, in order to retrieve the requested information, a manual review would be needed of each physical item seized within the timeframe to establish if it was seized from a car boot sale and if there were any arrests linked to such, this would mean a review of thousands of items which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the information within the cost threshold.  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

In relation to Q3, no information is held in relation to a specific policy or standard operating procedure specifically for policing car boots for stolen goods.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.