Lost Stolen Firearms

I am making and official request for the following information from you;

1. In the past five years how many firearms have been lost or stolen?
2. In the past five years how many rounds of firearms ammunition have been lost or stolen?
3. In the past five years how many pairs of handcuffs have been lost or stolen?
4. In the past five years how many non firearm police weapons (ie batons, tasers, cs gas) have been lost or stolen?
5. In the past five years how many items of police uniform have been lost or stolen? (Please provide a breakdown of what type of item).  Please could you distinguish between the number lost and the number stolen.

Please could you provide a breakdown for each year.

Please could you prioritise the most recent of these years.

In accordance with section 1 (1) (b) of the Act our response is provided below;

No Firearms or Ammunition have been lost or stolen in the last 5 years.

Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to issue a refusal notice, relying on a claim that section 12 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1 (1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

Cheshire Constabulary currently has 17 police stations which each hold a lost property register. Each register holds 100 incidents and each Police Station completes approximately 10 books per year. Therefore, to manually examine each record would take in excess of 566 hours per year and it is estimated would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004. Furthermore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned regulations.

Under section 16 Duty to provide advice and assistance so far as it is reasonable to do so, please find below a link to our website where we have answered a similar request in relation to theft of police property.

Previous Disclosure 2292