E-scooter and e-bike seizures
Date of request: 11 July 2026
Reference: 17772322
Request
In the past year how many illegal electric powered bicycles and scooters have been seized by Avon and Somerset officers.
How many targeted operations have been held in order to seize illegal bicycles and electric scooters.
Response
Avon and Somerset Police holds information relevant to the subject of your request. However, we are unable to provide a response without exceeding the appropriate cost limit. This is because the information is not recorded in a way that allows automated retrieval and extensive manual searches would be required to identify and collate all information falling within the scope of your request.
Information relevant to your request is held in more than one place within our systems. Some records relating to seized e-bikes and e-scooters are held by our Estates and Facilities team in relation to vehicles that have been destroyed following seizure. Additional information is held within our crime and operational recording systems in relation to vehicles seized and subsequently dealt with by officers. Information is also held by our vehicle recovery contractor in relation to certain vehicles seized through the recovery scheme.
Whilst some information relevant to your request can be identified, none of these sources constitutes a complete record of all e-bikes and e-scooters seized by Avon and Somerset Police.
Within our systems there are fields that may record the type of vehicle seized. However, these fields are not a comprehensive or mandatory means of recording all such seizures. Relevant information may instead be contained within free text fields or the body of individual records. Consequently, identifying all illegal electric bicycles and scooters seized during the requested timeframe would require manual review of a substantial number of property, vehicle seizure and related records to determine:
- Whether the item seized was an e-bike or e-scooter;
- Whether it had already been identified elsewhere, to avoid duplicate counting.
We estimate that this work would take in excess of 18 hours to complete.
In relation to your second question, the Constabulary does not maintain a central database or category for operations conducted specifically to target illegal e-bikes and e-scooters. Although information may exist within operational logs, briefing documents and other records, identifying all relevant activity would require searches across a range of systems followed by manual review to determine whether any operation fell within the scope of your request. We estimate that this work would also exceed the appropriate limit.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows public authorities to refuse requests where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit. For police authorities this limit is £450, or 18 staff hours. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days determining whether information is held and locating, retrieving and extracting it.
This letter therefore constitutes a refusal notice under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
If you would like to refine your request, we may be able to provide some limited information that may be of assistance.
Whilst we cannot identify all e-bike and e-scooter seizures within the cost limit, we may be able to provide information recorded from specific sources, namely:
- Data held by our Estates and Facilities team;
- Information recorded within specific vehicle seizure fields within our crime recording system;
- Information relating to e-bikes and e-scooters seized via the vehicle recovery scheme.
Please note that information obtained from these sources would not represent a complete record of all e-bikes and e-scooters seized by Avon and Somerset Police and should not be interpreted as comprehensive figures.
In relation to your question regarding targeted operations, some information about activity undertaken by Avon and Somerset Police to tackle illegal e-bikes and e-scooters is publicly available on our website:
Tackling Illegal E-Bikes and Scooters
You may also find the following published information useful:
E-scooter seizures | Avon and Somerset Police