How competent are the police? This question gained new relevance after Jean Charles de Menzes was shot dead by the Metropolitan Police. To answer it I made freedom of information requests to all the police forces in the United Kingdom about the number of compensation claims received over five years, their progress and the final payouts.

Record-keeping remains a problem for many forces. A sizeable majority could not say how many claims had resulted in court action, nor did they always know how much they had paid in settlements or how often they had been taken to court.

If it’s not required by Whitehall, many forces don’t see any point in keeping accessible data – even if it is clearly in the public interest, such as how much taxpayers’ money is paid out for police misconduct.

Kent Police gave no information at all, stating: “We do not collect or collate this information and therefore are not in a position to provide it.” Cheshire Police told us that wrongful arrest was “everyday sort of stuff” and that it did not have any need to keep such data. Cleveland Police, which is in the top three for both compensation and claims per 100,000, stated that since 2004 it no longer recorded the number of court actions. Durham said that its data was “unique and should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive”.

Some forces claimed that the only way they could count claims that resulted in court action would be to look through hundreds of files and that this would be expensive, taking from 10 minutes per file (Wiltshire) to 60 minutes (Strathclyde).

The Metropolitan Police, North Yorkshire and Greater Manchester forces claimed (incorrectly) that the data was published in their annual reports. There is a value-for-money argument in settling cases. There is also a public interest in knowing complaint details. If allegations are unknown and claimants paid to keep silent, systemic problems do not become known.

Heather Brooke is a specialist on freedom of information and author of Your Right to Know

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