FOI 309-2025 / Mar 2025 / Officer injuries
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 309-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 11th March 2025 as follows:
Q1. The number of police officers who have been injured while on duty in the last three years broken down by:
Q1a. Calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024)
Q1b. Injury Cause (for example, assault by civilian, slip,trip,fall, road traffic incident)
Q1c. Injury severity (serious/minor etc.)
Q2. The number of compensation claims made by police officers for injuries sustained on duty broken down by calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024)
Q2a. The number of settled claims, refused claims and amount of compensation awarded broken down by years as above.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Q1. The number of police officers who have been injured while on duty in the last three years broken down by:
Q1a. Calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024)
Q1b. Injury Cause (for example, assault by civilian, slip,trip,fall, road traffic incident)
Q1c. Injury severity (serious/minor etc.)
Q1 to Q1c response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. The business area has advised that whilst they record details of incidents for health and safety reasons, there is no way to easily isolate those that relate to officers. Therefore, in order to determine a response to these parts of the request, it would require a manual review of each incident, firstly to confirm if an officer was involved and secondly to determine whether an injury was caused and the severity. The incidents are recorded by financial year and records indicate there are likely to be around 650 cases falling within the scope of your request that would require manual review, and the business area has estimated that this work would take approximately 148 hours. This would therefore exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is considered to be up to 18 hours of work on one request.
In accordance with Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for these parts of the request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to refining your request; however, due to the volume of records that would need to be reviewed, I am unable to suggest a way to revise these parts of the request into one which could be provided within the fees limit.
Q2. The number of compensation claims made by police officers for injuries sustained on duty broken down by calendar years (2022, 2023, 2024)
Q2 response:
2022 – 3
2023 – 2
2024 – 2
Q2a. The number of settled claims, refused claims and amount of compensation awarded broken down by years as above.
Q2a response: Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, requires Warwickshire Police, when refusing to provide information (because the information is exempt), to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) States that fact,
(b) Specifies the exemption in question and
(c) States (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why that exemption applies.
I can advise that the requested information is held; however, the information is not suitable for disclosure.
The exemption applicable in this case is:
Section 40(2) Personal Information
Section 40 is an absolute class-based exemption, which does not require evidence of the harm disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test. Where Section 40(2) is engaged, in order to make the exemption absolute there needs to be evidence that a Data Protection Principle would be breached by disclosure.
This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information relates to personal data of a third party or could lead to the identification of an individual, either from that information alone or combined with any other information from within the Police Service or public domain. In this case, due to very low numbers, providing the requested information is likely to lead to the identification of an individual and provide personal information. Such disclosure would breach individuals’ rights under the Data Protection Act 2018, Article 5(1) of the GDPR which states that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
This letter serves as a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act for this part of the request.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB