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Settlement Agreements (312A/22)

Request

Original request:

I’m writing to request some data under Freedom of Information legislation about the number of confidentiality agreements reached in settlements with female staff in recent years.

By the term “confidentiality agreement” I mean ACAS COT3 documents, Settlement Agreements and Compromise Agreements which contain non-disclosure or confidentiality clauses preventing officers or staff and former officers or staff from sharing the facts and terms of a settlement and / or details of the claims or complaints they have made.

Please would you provide:

  1. The number of such agreements reached with current or former Police officers (of all ranks) and or employees between 2018 and 2022. Please break down the figures by calendar year for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date.
  2. The number of such agreements reached with current or former female Police officers and or current or former female employees between 2018 and 2022. Please break down the figures by calendar year for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date.
  3. The number of such agreements reached between 2018 and 2022 with current or former female Police officers and or current or former female employees whose complaints (whether lodged in the employment tribunal or by way of an internal complaint or grievance) alleged a breach of the Equality Act 2010 . Please break down the figures by calendar year for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date.
  4. The number of such agreements reached between 2018 and 2022 with current or former female Police officers and or current or former female employees whose complaints have alleged a sexual offence(s) against them, another former or current Officer, employee or other third party by a Police officer or employee. Please break down the figures by calendar year for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date. Sexual offence also includes sexual harassment.

Refinement received 29/03/2022:

I would be grateful if you would go ahead with my request as per your suggestion, that is:

“…within the cost limit we could conduct a search for agreements of this type for the period 2019 – 2022”

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 exemption:

Section 40(2) – Personal information

This exemption and explanatory notes are shown here:

https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/information-management/freedom-of-information/#freedom-of-information-exemptions

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. Any information that relates to an individual, or from which an individual could be identified, constitutes personal data and to release information that constitutes personal data into the public domain contravenes the Data Protection Act and GDPR. 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.

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.

Attachments

312A_Attachment