FOI 0824-2025/26- E-scooter seizures
Request:
Q1. The number of privately-owned e-scooters that were seized by your police force:
between 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2022;
between 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2023;
between 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024;
between 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.
Q2. Of the e-scooters seized between 1 October 2021 and 30 September 2025, the number that were released back to owners:
between 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2022;
between 1 October 2022 to 30 September 2023;
between 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024;
between 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.
Q3. The name and date of any specific operations your force has conducted, targeting the illegal or anti-social use of privately owned e-scooters. [Please specify if the operation also targeted enforcement of anti-social or illegal use of e-bikes or other forms of micromobility.]
Q4. Please provide the current policy or standard operating procedure for the disposal or handling of seized e-scooters.
Q5. Please provide a copy of any internal policy, guidance, or standard operating procedure (SOP) that governs how officers should approach enforcement action against e-scooter riders.
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 all reports in the timeframe stated relating to instances of a seized vehicle, to be able to ascertain if it specifically related to an e-scooter. This would mean reading through hundreds of reports 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). We may be able to provide you with the number of incidents within a specified time frame where key words are recorded in the MO Summary field, for example “e-scooter” or “electric scooter”. You would be required to provide a list of Key Words for us to search upon. However the accuracy of these results rely on an Officer recording the specific words in the field and it is likely that further manual reads would be required in order to ensure the results fit to your request (i.e. person working at the time of the incident). Due to the above I do not feel that results would be reliable. Please do not hesitate to contact me further to discuss or submit a new request.
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.