Compensation (1215A/22)
Request
Please could you provide the following information broken down by calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (or the latest available data):
- a) the number of cases where your police force has paid an out of court settlement or paid compensation to individuals
- b) the nature of the cases where compensation or settlement has been paid. For example, this could mean ‘wrongful arrest’, ‘loss of property’, ‘excessive force or assault’ etc.
- c) the sum the force has paid in damages or to settle these complaints
If possible, please could you provide a breakdown for each year by the age of the complainant
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation to the nature of the complaint, this would be contained within the summary of the case, therefore each case would need to be located and retrieved and manually read to determine the reason for the case / claim to be made.
Therefore, the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request
However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide the following information in relation to the number of payments and the total paid for the following financial years.
- April 2019- March 2020 there were 155 payments for damages totalling £382,226.05
- April 2020 – March 2021 there were 136 payments for damages totalling £738,424.04
- April 2021 – March 2022 there were over 200 payments for damages totalling £738,988.23
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
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