Your Request

 For each calendar year 2021,2022,2023,2024, 2025:

1. The number of recorded sexual offences where the suspect was identified (or recorded) as:

• A taxi (hackney carriage) driver, or
• A private hire driver

If occupation is not a searchable field, please instead provide:

• Data based on keyword searches of crime reports, MO fields, or occurrence summaries using terms such as:

'taxi', 'cab', 'private hire', 'Uber'

Please include results based on keyword matches without requiring manual verification, where necessary to remain within cost limits.

2. If available, a breakdown by:

• Offence type
• Outcome

4. If available within cost limits, a breakdown of offences by time of day (for example, grouped into hourly bands or broader categories such as daytime vs night-time).
5. Please confirm whether your force uses any flag, marker, or category to identify offences involving taxi or private hire drivers.

Freedom of Information Act 2000

I can confirm that the information requested is held in part by Durham Constabulary. I have detailed within the tables below the information that is being released to you noting that it is based upon a keyword search of 'taxi', 'cab', 'private hire' and 'Uber' within the Modus Operandi (MO) text. This does not necessarily indicate that the suspect / offender was a taxi driver, simply that one of these keywords featured within the MO text. Furthermore, there is no flag or marker etc on the crime recording system (or any other system for that matter) that would readily identify offences involving taxi or private hire drivers.

Offence Sub-Class

Time Group Offence Committed

Crime Outcomes

The request has been considered in full and I am not obliged by statute to provide any further information by virtue of the following exemption:

Section 40(2) - Personal Information

Section 40 is an absolute class-based exemption which does not require the public interest to be considered nor harm to be articulated but Section 40(2) specifically relates to third party personal information as defined by the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). To fully disclose the exact offence type risks identifying individuals involved. Disclosure of this requested information would constitute a breach of Principle 1 of the DPA. Principle 1 states that personal data shall be processed (used) fairly and lawfully. In reaching this conclusion I am mindful of the conditions for lawful processing and have judged that individuals have a reasonable and legitimate privacy expectation that their personal details are processed accordingly. The individuals concerned have not consented to disclosure of data in this context and have a legitimate privacy expectation that their personal details would not be disclosed.