Drug misuse offences recorded in Barrow-in-Furness

FOI reference: FOI-2025-3157

You asked

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I would like to request the following information:

1. The number of drug misuse offences recorded in Barrow-in-Furness for the year ending July 2025.
2. The types of drugs involved in these offences.
3. The age demographics of individuals involved in these offences.
4. Any available data on the locations within Barrow where these offences were most frequently recorded.

Additionally, I would like to request an overview of the extent and trends of illicit drug use in Barrow-in-Furness for the year ending July 2025. This data should be from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

We said

Thank you for your request.  

Unfortunately, we do not hold all the data you have requested.   

We produce statistics from two main data sources, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Police Recorded Crime (PRC). Our publications and data include crime as it is experienced by victims (CSEW) and as it is recorded by police across England and Wales (PRC).  

In relation to your first question, our latest Crime in England and Wales release relates to data from the year ending March 2025.  Table C2 in the Police Force Area tables dataset contains PRC data on headline offences by Community Safety Partnership area for the year ending March 2025. This indicates that 311 drug offence incidents were recorded by the police in Barrow-in-Furness.   

This data is published quarterly and data for the year ending June 2025 will be released on 23rd October 2025.  

In relation to questions three and four, unfortunately the data above does not include a breakdown by age of offender or by a more specific incident location within the Barrow-in Furness area as we do not collect or hold this.  

We do not hold or publish data on offenders. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are primarily responsible for producing statistics on offenders, convictions and prosecutions and they publish court statistics on a quarterly basis. The most recent publication is Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2024 

The MoJ may be able to help further with this request and can be contacted via: data.access@justice.gov.uk.

In relation to question two and your final question, our latest data on the extent and trends of illicit drug use was published in Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2024. This includes data on lifetime drug use by 16- to 59-year-olds, by drug type. However, this data is not disaggregated by geographical area due to disclosure controls.  Section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (SRSA) renders it a criminal offence to disclose information held by the Statistics Board (ONS) for statistical purposes that would identify an individual or a body corporate. As we are prohibited by law from publishing statistics in which individuals can be identified, Section 44(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies. 

 We provisionally plan to publish our Drug misuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2025 release on 11 December 2025 as can be seen in our release calendar. 

As such, some of the information you have requested is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions. 

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before. 

If you have any further crime-related queries, the ONS Centre for Crime and Justice can be contacted via CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk.