Witness Accommodation and Expenses

1. For both 2010 and 2009, please state the total amount spent on hotel rooms for witnesses and police officers involved in court cases.  If it makes it easier, take the stats from the current financial year (10 – 11) and the last financial year (09-10).
2. Please provide a full list of hotels that have been used for both 2009 and 2010 and state how many times each one has been used. I am interested in the total number of rooms booked. For example, if the Travelodge in ‘Newtown’ has been booked 85 times for 40 different witnesses on 20 different nights, the answer to this question is 85.  Total usage is what I am after.
3. 3) What is the largest expenses spend on any one individual for both 2009 and 2010? Within this I am interested in travel expenses, hotels, meals and any other costs paid. Please say which hotel was used, how many nights it was booked for, how much the travel came to and how much was spent on food. Please also state the type of hearing the witness was attending (Magistrates, Crown Court trial etc). Finally please say whether the individual was a police officer, expert witness, ‘civilian’ or categorised in any other way.
4. Please summarise briefly what the force policy is on hotel rooms for witnesses is (or attach document if one exists). This may be, for example, the witness must live more than 30 miles away from court before they are eligible for accommodation etc).
5. Please state who pays the bill – is it the Crown Prosecution Service or the police force or another body (central government)?

In accordance with the Act our response is provided below;

In respect of witness expenses, the Cheshire Constabulary does not hold this information. The information is likely be held by the Crown Prosecution Service. Details can be found on the following web page: Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

In respect of any expenses incurred by officers attending court and not dealt with through the CPS, these are likely to be reclaimed using the established expenses claims procedure by individual officers. To recover any such information would entail manually examining 21 months of claim forms. This, it is estimated, would take many hours to achieve, far in excess of the FOI appropriate cost limits.

The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004. Furthermore, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned regulations.