Accident and compensation for police accidents

Dear Claire

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 0181/10

We acknowledge receipt of your Freedom of Information (FOI) request which
was received by Cambridgeshire Constabulary on 13/04/10.

Your request will now be considered in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. You will receive a response within the statutory
timescale of twenty working days as defined by the Act. In some
circumstances, we may be unable to achieve this deadline. If this is the
case, you will be informed and given a revised time-scale at the earliest
opportunity.

If we require any further clarification regarding this request, you will
be notified.

We would advise you that the nature of certain requests may involve
payment of a fee. If this is the case, you will be notified.

Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please
telephone on 0345 456 456 4 asking for the Information Access Office or
email [email address]

Regards

Donna Anderson
Information Access Office
Cambridgeshire Constabulary

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Dear Ms Claire H

Please accept my apology for the delay in responding. Your email to the
Police Authority Mailbox was initially filtered out. We have taken steps
to address this problem.

The Authority does not normally hold the information that you have
requested but the Constabulary may, and so I have passed this on to the
Constabulary Information Access Office for their attention on this
occasion, on the assumption that you are happy for me to so do.

Sorry once again for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Regards
Ronnie Yellon
Policy & Performance Manager
Cambridgeshire Police Authority
Hinchingbrooke Park
Huntingdon
PE29 6NP

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Dear Claire

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO:0181/2010

In reply to your request for information under the Freedom of Information
Act 2000, dated 19th March

In order for me to progress with this request, please could you provide
this office with further information as follows:

1. Please provide your full surname or confirm that it is simply "H";
2. Please advise whether you wish to received information by calendar or
financial year (1 April to 31 March).

After receiving your reply, your request will then be considered and you
will receive the information requested within the statutory timescale of
20 working days as defined by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, subject
to the information not being exempt or containing a reference to a third
party.

However, if the requested additional information has not been received by
14 days from the date on this email, I will assume you no longer wish to
proceed with this request and will treat it as withdrawn.

Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please
contact the Information Access Office on telephone number 0345 456 456 4
extension 8164.

Yours sincerely

David Price
Information Access Office
Cambridgeshire Constabulary

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Dear Claire

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 0181/2010

In reply to your request for information under the Freedom of Information
Act 2000, dated 19th March 2010 and received in Cambridgeshire
Constabulary as follows:

1. How many accidents have police patrol cars been involved in over the
last five financial years?

2. How many compensation cases for patrol car related accidents have been
dealt with over the past five financial years?

3. How many of these have been the been paid?

Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act states that a public
authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the
authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would
exceed the ***appropriate limit***. For Police forces in the UK, the
"appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one
request. This information is given in the Freedom of Information (Fees and
Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

It is estimated that it will take 22.5 hours to provide an answer to this
request for each year of data required. This is because, in order to
located the full information required would necessitate a manual trawl of
approximately 450 files for each of the past five financial years. At an
average of 3 minutes per record, this equates to 22.5 hours for each
financial year. Unfortunately I cannot suggest a method of paring your
request into a more manageable form.

Although excess cost removes the force***s obligation under the Freedom of
Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information,
relative to your request, that was retrieved or available before it was
realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful,
but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for
the remainder of the request.

In respect of all police vehicles (vans, cars, motorcyles), I can advise
that the following table provides the answers to questions 1 & 3 of your
request:

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| | 2005/06 | 2006/07 | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 |
|----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Vehicles involved in | 91 | 156 | 256 | 263 | 203 |
| Collisions | | | | | |
|----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Compensation Claims | 37 | 39 | 43 | 41 | 18 |
| Paid | | | | | |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Note: Compensation paid as a result of a claim are not always an admission
of fault . Payments can in some circumstances be made without admission of
liability, and many of these cases will be settled on a split liability
basis, ie responsibility for the incident is shared between all parties
involved.

We are unable to retrieve information for question 2 within cost.

If you wish to appeal our decisions, please see the attachment below,
which sets out your rights to appeal.

(See attached file: Complaint Rights new.nov - 09.pdf)

Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please
contact the Information Access Office on telephone number 0345 456 456 4
extension 8164.

Regards

David Price
Information Access Office
Cambridgeshire Constabulary

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