FOI 1318-2025/26- Spiking

Request:

Total cases

Please state the total number of offences that were reported to the police as alleged spiking (including needling) for the following calendar years – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.

[Note - by spiking we refer to administering a substance without consent as it has been commonly understood under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and as it will now be considered under the Crime and Policing Bill 2025.]

Q1. Please provide the breakdown of the suspects and victims by gender

Q2. Please provide the breakdown of victim ages according to these age groups: under 18, 18-24, 25-34, 35-50, over 50     

Q3. Please provide the breakdown of spiking method (ie. substance added to beverage, needle/injection, food spiking etc)       

Q4. Please provide the breakdown of the type of venue of the alleged drink spiking (ie. pub, bar, restaurant, private residence, university accommodation etc)            

Q5. Please provide the breakdown of the local authority where the incidents occurred       

Outcome

For the following calendar years – 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 – please provide this information:

Q6. Total number of reported alleged drink spiking offences that were investigated by the police

Q7. Total number of offences that were referred to the Crown Prosecution Service

Q8. Total number of offences that were prosecuted

Q9. Please provide the breakdown of the outcome of prosecuted cases

Most recent year

For the calendar year 2025, please provide this information:

Q10. The average time between the alleged drink spiking incident and when the incident was reported to the police

Q11 Please state the name of any institutions where there have been more than five reported alleged drink spiking offences, as well as the total number of alleged drink spiking offences at these venues.

Q12. Please state the number of incidents of fraud reported where victims believe they were spiked beforehand

Please provide your answers in CSV format

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.

In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review over 700 reposts to be able to establish the method of spiking, the number of which resulted in a prosecution and the outcome of such prosecution as well venues that have had over 5 reported alleged spiking incidents. This manual process 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, we may be able to provide some information for the rest of the request if you resubmit and omit Q3, Q8, Q9 and Q11 .  If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

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.