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Information not held by Lancashire Constabulary to Gareth Oakley on 21 November 2008.
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All information sent by National Policing Improvement Agency to John Brown on 17 February 2009.
Commercial Access To Stolen Vehicle Reports
A Freedom of Information request to National Policing Improvement Agency by Gareth Oakley
The request was successful.
Gareth Oakley
28 October 2008
Dear Sir or Madam,
Please note: I have previously sent this request to Lancashire
Constabulary as the force in my locality. However I realise that
you are likely to be the more appropriate agency to deal with this
request. Please disregard any duplicate if forwarded to you by
Lancashire Constabulary.
I am writing this FOI request to discover information about how
reports of stolen cars are dealt with by the Police in regards to
how they are made available to others. Various commercial
organisations appear to have access to a regularly updated listing
of stolen vehicles which are in turn made available to be queried
by members of the public - the purpose of which is to help
consumers establish if a car they wish to purchase has been
reported stolen. To date it would appear that the following
companies have access to this information:
* CDL Vehicle Information Services Limited
* HPI Limited
* Motorfile Limited
I would like to request:
* A full listing of the organisations the Police makes stolen
vehicle reports available to
* Details of any charges the Police makes to these organisations
* Details of how to apply to access these reports
Yours faithfully,
Gareth Oakley
Information Desk
National Policing Improvement Agency
29 October 2008
Dear Mr Oakley
Thank you for your recent request for information about 'Commercial Access to Stolen Vehicle Reports' dated 28th October 2008. Your request was received on 28th October 2008, and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
We have logged your request which is receiving our attention. Your request reference number is (44719). Please quote this reference number in any further correspondence or call relating to this enquiry.
Further information about the NPIA is routinely published on our website at www.npia.police.uk or through our publication scheme. If you require any further assistance in connection with this request please contact us at our address below.
Regards
Gary Sidaway
Front Line Support Officer
show quoted sections
Cundy Phil
National Policing Improvement Agency
30 October 2008
Dear Mr Oakley,
You requested the following information:
* A full listing of the organisations the Police makes stolen
vehicle reports available to
* Details of any charges the Police makes to these organisations
* Details of how to apply to access these reports
In order for us to progress these please can you be more specific as to what details you require regarding charges made to organisations (is this just a question of how much?) and expand on what you mean by applying for 'access' to these reports. For example would this be as an individual asking for information concerning a specific vehicle, access as part of a commercial venture or something else?
Yours sincerely
Phil Cundy
Service Improvement Manager
National Policing Improvement Agency
Telephone: +44 (0)208 358 5134
Email: [email address]
Web: www.npia.police.uk
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Gareth Oakley
30 October 2008
Dear Phil Cundy,
Thank you for your prompt reply requesting clarification. You are
correct in that I would like to find out the financial costs the
Police impose to organisations wishing to access this data.
I am currently building a web site which aims to gather information
on a vehicle from the various different government sources and
present it in one place. As someone interested in buying a car a
user can actually find a lot of useful information already from the
DVLA, VOSA and the VCA free of charge it would be of further use to
bring it together since the information can be used to help spot
fraudulent documents and prevent consumers becoming victims of
vehicle fraud.
I am not intending to or indeed wish to charge for this service -
I'm building it since I feel consumers should not be charged by
commercial organisations to help themselves from becoming victims
of crime. Especially so when the government holds much of the data
that can help them.
As far as I am aware these organisations have access to a full list
of stolen vehicles or some means of querying this list
electronically. Adding the ability to check if a car has been
reported stolen to the site I propose would be very useful. For
that reason I would like to find out how to request the same
information available to these commercial organisations. I suspect
this information is unlikely to be given out without due care, but
I would still appreciate the chance to go through whatever process
is entailed to access it if it means building a useful resource for
consumers.
Thank you,
Gareth Oakley
NPIA Information Desk
National Policing Improvement Agency
17 November 2008
Dear Mr Oakley
Please find attached the NPIA's response to your FOI request dated 28th October 2008.
<<NRSB99-0111-081117 Final Response 44719.pdf>>
Regards
Lisa Thorpe
Front Line Support Officer
National Policing Improvement Agency
Tel: +44 (0)208 358 5555
Email: [email address]
Website: www.npia.police.uk
*****************************************************************
Any opinions expressed in this email are those of the individual and not necessarily those of NPIA.
It is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed and may contain privileged information.
Accordingly, the copying, dissemination or distribution of this message to any other person may constitute a breach of Civil or Criminal Law.
*****************************************************************
Christopher left an annotation (19 November 2008)
£12,000 per request does sound like rather a lot, but would I guess that it's set at this level to keep the number of requests made from commercial organisations in check.
Querying the Police National Computer to compile this extract may well be a time- and resource-consuming job. As policing needs rather than commercial interests come first in terms of PNC resource allocation, I can understand the possible need for a discouragingly-high fee. Even so, £12k does seem a bit much.
I don't quite understand the conflict of interest allegation though. Vehicles are always going to be stolen, or fraudulently traded. It's not as if the NPIA are actively encouraging this in order to provide data on it.
Gareth Oakley left an annotation (23 November 2008)
Whilst they aren't actively encouraging vehicle crime through these charges they do stand to effectively profit from it. I can possibly understand a small charge being made for the actual cost of providing these records but this should be very small since once the work to generate this listing has been carried out once repeating it should take very little time at all.
In any case the next step for me is applying to the mentioned board to see if they will allow access and what charge they will actually make for this data. The price given in this FOI may be a standardised charge for all commercial access to the PNC where it is felt it could be commercially exploted. I don't want to charge for access and at the moment I'm not even looking to make money off providing access, so I may be able to gain access free of charge.
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
Gareth Oakley left an annotation (18 November 2008)
The real number itself is likely to be smaller since the report says that some may organisations pay less or possibly even nothing. However, most of this still is surely profit - I personally find that to be a serious conflict of interest since that data is in demand due to vehicle fraud happening in the first place.
I'll look to place another FOI request asking the total income the police make from granting access to stolen vehicle reports.
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