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Request:
Q1. Please tell me for the financial years a) 2021/22, b) 2022/23, and c) 2023/24 on how many occasions your police force has made compensation or ex gratia payments to individuals whose properties have been damaged during a forced entry that was unlawful (either because the wrong address was raided or because a warrant had not been secured).
Q2. For a) 2021/22, b) 2022/23, and c) 2023/24 please tell me the total amount of compensation and ex gratia payments paid out to individuals following an unlawful forced entry. Please break down for each year the amount corresponding to compensation payments and the amount attributable to legal costs.
Q3. Please state the FIVE biggest amounts settled over this three-year period, stating how much corresponded to legal costs and how much corresponded to compensation in each case and the financial year in which it was settled. In addition, please give a brief summary of the circumstances that led to the compensation payment in each of the three cases without revealing personal details, e.g., “officers broke down the door at number 25a when the warrant was for 25b”.
NOTE: In all cases, I am referring to the year in which the claim was settled, not the year the incident happened or the year the claim was lodged.
Response:
Extent of Searches to Locate Information
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information.
Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.
Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.
In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review each case file in relation to compensation paid or ex-gratia payments made in connection with a forced entry over the timeframe requested to establish if the compensation or ex-gratia payment related to a forced entry which was unlawful, this manual process would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act.
Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.
Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). However, we may be able to provide some information in relation to the total number of times compensation or ex-gratia payments have been paid in relation to a forced entry if you resubmit and omit the breakdown of unlawful. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.