Employment Tribunal Cases (606A/22)
Request
I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information act. I am looking to find out information about cases of racial, sexual and homophobic discrimination which have been brought against the force by officers, staff, PSCO’s and all other police force members.
I would like the following information:
- In how many racial, sexual, homophobic discrimination cases which have gone to employment tribunal have the claimants (officers, staff, PSCO’s etc) had their claim upheld?
- When the claimant has had their claim of racial, sexual, homophobic discrimination upheld by the tribunal, how much, in each instance, has the force had to pay in damages, compensation and legal costs? If you could provide an overall total for the amount of money, as well as breaking it down for each case.
- How many racial, sexual, homophobic discrimination cases have been settled in an out of court settlement?
- In the cases where a settlement has been reached, how much was the settlement? If you could provide figures for each individual settlement as well as an overall total for all the settlements which have occurred?
I would like to request these figures for the time period 2021 to date. Please clearly date each case for clarity. In each instance, please clearly signal whether the case is for racial, sexual or homophobic discrimination or if the case involves more than one of the forms of discrimination (e.g. racial and sexual discrimination).
Response
We can confirm that relevant information is held by West Midlands Police. However, while the majority of the information is attached to this email, I am not required to release all of the information requested. Please find attached our response.
REASONS FOR DECISION
The withheld information is exempt by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 40(2) – Personal information
Section 44(1)(c) – Prohibitions on disclosure
These exemptions and explanatory notes are shown here:
Section 40(2) is an absolute and class-based exemption if to release the information exists would breach the third party’s data protection rights. In this case to release this personal information would not constitute fair processing of the data. As this exemption is class-based I am not required to identify the harm in disclosure and in this instance I believe that the right to privacy outweighs any public interest in release.
Section 44 is an absolute and class-based exemption and there is no requirement to carry out a public interest test.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
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 those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would 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.