Council-owned fleet vehicles between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2024
Case reference FOI2024/01152
Received 3 July 2024
Published 25 July 2024
Request
Please can you supply me with the following information?
Registration number:
Make:
Model:
of all your fleet Council owned vehicles between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2024 within your Council.
Response
Please can you supply me with the following information?
Registration number:
Make:
Model:
of all your fleet Council owned vehicles between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2024 within your Council.
A) Please see the attached FOI2024 01152 Response Spreadsheet.
Please note that the Registration Numbers have been withheld under Section 31 (1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which exempts information if it would, or would be likely, to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime.
Disclosing the information would be likely to result in criminals using the information for the purposes of criminal activity, such as cloning of vehicles for the purposes of, for instance, theft and traffic offence avoidance. I therefore consider that in this instance Section 31 of the Act is engaged.
This particular exemption is subject to the public interest test, and accordingly I have taken the following factors into consideration:
Favouring disclosure of the information:
Openness and transparency regarding the vehicles owned, leased or hired by the council.
Providing details of the requested vehicles would enable the public to access information on vehicles formerly used by the Council. In doing so they would be able to independently check whether a second hand vehicle they were considering purchasing had once been used by the Council, a use which would have an impact on its value e.g. it may affect its long term reliability or there may be extra wear and tear throughout.
Favouring withholding the information:
Disclosure of the vehicle registration numbers in conjunction with the other details regarding the vehicles requested, could enable the vehicles to be cloned for criminal purposes i.e. they could be used to avoid liability for traffic violation fines, road tax / MOT / insurance avoidance or could be used as part of a chain for moving vehicles for fencing purposes. Indeed by providing details of registrations together with details of the make and model of a vehicle it would enable someone looking to disguise a vehicle by cloning a number plate from a range of registrations that do belong to that make / model of vehicle and make it look like someone else's vehicle.
Although it is possible for that criminals could do this anyway, though simply observing vehicles and making a note of the registration numbers, providing the information requested would make it much easier for them to do this.
Although the information would be useful for members of the public who wish to undertake an independent check on a used vehicle they are considering purchasing, there are other means of identifying whether vehicles have previously been hired / leased / owned by the council, and free advice is also available on the internet for people to search for if they are concerned about this issue. The free availability of such information lessens the public need for a disclosure of this information, and is clearly outweighed when there is a real risk of the information being subsequently used to facilitate criminal activities if it were released.
If an organisation's vehicle was cloned and used for criminal purposes it would have a significant effect on those concerned. Time would need to be spent responding to any resulting police investigation which would cost a business time and resources. Time would also have to be spent by the police or other agencies excluding the genuine vehicle from their investigation, which would also result in a further cost to the public purse, and would also give the criminals responsible more time to hide evidence of their activities.
In this instance the public interest favours withholding the information. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act for this part of your request.
Documents
This is Herefordshire Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
You can browse our other responses or make a new FOI request.