FOI 20559-25 - EV charging stations

Request:

I’m submitting a Freedom of Information request as part of a data project examining public safety around electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure across the UK.

Please could you provide the following information for your force area, covering the period 1st January 2020 to 30th September 2025 (or most recent available):

1. The number of reported crimes that took place:
(a) At public EV charging stations;
(b) Or within 50 metres of a public EV charging station.

2. Please break this down by:
(a) Year;
(b) Crime type;
(c) Location (postcode or nearest street).

3. If recorded, please also include:
(a) Whether CCTV footage was available;
(b) Whether the area was lit at the time (if noted).

If this request exceeds the cost limit, please prioritise providing:
• A total yearly crime count near EV charging stations
• The top 10 most affected locations

Further clarified as follows:
We’ve received a similar request from another police force, and they advised using specific location keywords relevant to the data while still limiting the search to their force area. For example, keywords such as:
• Electric vehicle charger
• EV point
• EV charging point
• EV charging station
• Electric vehicle charging station
• Electric vehicle station

Response:

Searched for all offences under crime tree level 4 between 1st January 2020 and 23 October 2025 where the MO free text or the Remarks section of the occurrence address mention any of the following key words: Electric vehicle charger, EV point, EV charging point, EV charging station, Electric vehicle charging station or Electric vehicle station.

We are unable to provide specific data on crimes within 50 metres of a public EV charging station without knowing the locations of them. However, the keywords provided have been searched for in both the free text and the remarks field within the address section. Each occurrence entry has then been manually reviewed to ensure that the occurrence took place at a public charging station and to ascertain whether there was any CCTV and whether the area was lit.

Without a list of public charging stations, we are unable to retrieve data in any other way than the search method outlined above.

There was no information with regards to the lighting in the area of each offence.

As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Incident Description or Crime MO. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Keyword searches are problematic and in no way provide accurate results or figures. If the selected key words have not been mentioned, the data will not be returned.

The numerical data presented in this response is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article or use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.