FOI 905/24 Civil Claims Settlement Pay outs

Dear Sir/Madam,

Enquiry Reference:  905- 24                                                                         

I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your request and our response.

• Under the FOI Act, can I request a) the overall number of civil claims settled and b) the total cost in settlement payouts in each financial year from 2019/20 to 2023/24, in relation to claims made to members of the public.

Please note that the claims settled in the above years may not have been received in the same year

• Particularly, a breakdown of how many of these claims were for malfeasance and the total amount paid in such cases would be useful. 

Having made enquiries within the Force we would reply on the following.

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1 (1) (a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

• We are unable to breakdown the claims by type for malfeasance as we do not have a report for this and would require going into each claim to review. We record time in 6 minute units, therefore going into each file at 6 minutes per file would be over the given hours for responding to an FOI.

It is estimated that this would take in excess of the appropriate time stipulated by the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer on the 18th Of October 2004, that is, eighteen hours.

This falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken.

Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17 of the Freedom of information Act. Once one part of the request is over the time specified the whole request is.

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 information requested for the remaining questions as this was retrieved during our initial research. This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.

Please be advised that this information is dynamic and can change due to the identification of incorrect records/duplicates and their removal.

Please note that all statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.

If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request, you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice

Yours sincerely

Information Rights Decision Maker