FOI 383/25 Police Related Collisions

Enquiry Reference: 383-25                                                                                               

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

For calendar years 2020 - 2024, please provide:

1. The number of recorded Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs) involving a police vehicle and a non-police vehicle, where the police vehicle was responding to an incident with emergency warning equipment (blue lights and/or sirens) activated at the time of the collision.

1. Please exclude collisions involving pedestrians
2. Where possible, please indicate whether the collision occurred during a pursuit or en route to an incident.

2. For each year, please categorise RTCs by severity of the outcome as follows:

        Damage Only

        Personal Injury: further broken down by the number of individuals involved with injuries classified as:

            Fatal

            Serious

            Slight

3. For each year, for vehicles involved in these collisions, advise on:

        The number of police vehicles written off following such collisions

        Police vehicle repair costs

        The costs paid out to third parties for injuries/damage to their vehicles.

• No information held.

The data on police vehicle involvement is theoretically held, therefore, to determine such detail would require a manual search through all the records but as this is not t a specific classification of vehicle, it would rely on the reporting officer noting it in the free-text field.

We also do not centrally record if police vehicle was responding to an incident with emergency warning equipment (blue lights and/or sirens) activated at the time of the collision.

The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.

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