You asked
I am requesting of you under the Freedom of Information Act any information or statistics available pertaining to theft from churches, particularly of lead, since 2008?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry on statistics relating to theft of lead from churches, since 2008. Unfortunately, we do not hold any data on the specific offence that you refer to.
Theft of lead from churches would be classified as a metal theft. Statistics on metal theft are available from a separate data collection from the main police recorded crime collection, which was established in April 2012. The latest data available from this collection are published in Table 17 of the Property Crime tables, which provide data on the number of metal theft offences recorded by the police since the year ending March 2013. Forces can flag theft offences that involve metal theft and break these offences down further as relating to either infrastructure or non-infrastructure. Infrastructure related thefts involve the removal of metal that has a direct impact on the functioning or structure of buildings or services. This includes the theft of live services such as railway cabling, lead roofing from churches and historical buildings and copper cabling from power supplies. Unfortunately it is not possible to separately identify theft of lead from churches from this collection.
For further detail on metal theft offences, you may wish to contact the Home Office at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.