Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
1. Can I please ask how many payments and the combined total of payments have been made for compensation claims from your police force in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022? Can these be sent as separate annual totals?
2. Further, can I have the details - within the limits of privacy and protection - for any individual compensation payments over £50,000 within these years. If, for instance, a compensation has been granted for a death in custody, could the reason, gender and age of victim, prison and total compensation be cited? If any of these would violate the FOI and as such result in a rejection, please redact and proceed on the others.
After we sought clarity on your submission you advised:
This would relate to anything meeting the criteria for a compensation claim, for example forces have cited death in custody, personal injury, damage to property, data protection breaches, failings in duty, unlawful arrest, financial losses, various pleadings that are relevant.
in terms of complaint types,: complaint allegations subject to special procedures, conduct allegations, and officers who've left or retired while or before misconduct procedures have been active against them.
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Legal Department and the Area Commands of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police.
I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.
1. 2018 - 15 Public Liability civil claims - total amount of compensation paid was £19,063.35
2019 - 11 Public Liability civil claims - total amount of compensation paid was £38,838.74
2020 - 20 Public Liability civil claims - total amount of compensation paid was £156,359.62
2021 - 25 Public Liability civil claims - total amount of compensation paid was £85,411.32
2022 - 14 Public Liability civil claims - total amount of compensation paid was £15,750.00
Civil claims which are processed by Area Commands are recorded in financial year periods therefore this is how it has been presented:
2018/19 - £22,825.99 - 73 claims paid out
2019/20 - £15,053.09 - 33 claims paid out
2020/21 - £10,374.22 - 44 claims paid out
2021/22 - £6,930.29 - 26 claims paid out
2. No information held. There have been no compensation payments over £50,000 within the years specified.
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.
