E-scooter seizures

Response

Avon and Somerset Police holds information on the subject of your request. However, we cannot provide a response without exceeding the appropriate cost limit. This is because the information is not recorded in a way that allows automated retrieval. Extensive manual searches of our files would therefore be required to complete our response.

 

Information relevant to your request is held in more than one place in our systems. Some records of seized e-scooters would be held by our Estates and Facilities team in relation to e-scooters that have been seized and taken to our garages. Additional information is held within our crime recording system, Niche, in relation to e-scooters taken to stations by officers and disposed of. While we would be able to retrieve some information relevant to your request, it would not be possible to retrieve all relevant information within the appropriate limit, as explained below.

 

Within Niche, there is a field to record the vehicle type of seized vehicles. We would be able to provide data on the number of seized vehicles in each year for which this field has been completed and matches either ‘e-scooter’ or ‘electric scooter’. However, vehicle type is not a mandatory field and further relevant information may be held within the body of records for vehicle seizures in which the specific data field has not been recorded. To identify all information within the scope of your request would therefore require a manual review of seized vehicle records for a four year timeframe. We estimate that this would take more than 18 hours to complete.

 

Section 12 of the Act 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 the department holds the information and locating, retrieving, and extracting it.

 

This letter represents a Refusal Notice under the Act.

 

If you would like to refine your request, we may be able to supply you with some information that may be of use. ICO guidance confirms that organisations have an obligation to provide data within the scope of a request even if it is inaccurate.

 

In line with this guidance, we would be able to confirm the number of e-scooters recorded as seized in the specified timeframe:

1 – by our Estates and Facilities team

2 – within the specific data field for seized vehicles within our crime recording system

 

As explained, this data would not be reflective of the true number of e-scooters seized in this period.

 

Regarding question 3, while there is no comprehensive central record of operations targeting e-scooters, some information relating to specific examples is available online via the following links:

 

Avon and Somerset Police use drones in illegal e-scooter sting – BBC News

 

E-Scooters and Surron bikes | Avon and Somerset Police

 

Regarding questions 4 and 5, subject to any applicable exemptions we would also be able to provide a copy of our intranet guidance entitled Micromobility, as well as the following documents available to officers and staff via that page:

 

• e-scooter flyer Public 2023
• Electric Vehicle – Officer Guidance Leaflet
• e-scooter Seizure and Warning Process Map
• Corporate letter
• School letter
• Micromobility briefing note 2025

 

To assist further, I can confirm that no seized e-scooters have been returned to owners.