Public Appeal for Information and Witnesses

1. Cheshire Constabulary’s policy for deciding which offences, crimes and incidents are sufficient to warrant a public appeal for information and/or a public appeal witnesses being made.
2. Cheshire Constabulary’s process for deciding such decisions, as referred to in point 1, should this not be contained in the policy document requested in point 1.
3. Details of the relevant guidance from the Home Office or other relevant body, which the policy referred to in point 1 is based.

In accordance with section 1(1) (a) of the Act our response is provided below;

There is no information held.

The following notes have been provided by our Corporate Communications Department.

We do not have a policy specifying criteria for issue of appeals. This is left to the discretion of the investigating officer to determine if a public appeal will help detect the crime. Not every crime has an appeal -- for example, where an officer has other good lines of enquiry (forensic, or existing witnesses) they will probably not issue a media appeal. Similarly, if there is no indication of when an offence took place and no description of any possible offender, appeals will not usually be issued via media -- but they may be highlighted in a Homewatch bulletin in case anyone on the Homewatch network saw anything suspicious in the relevant location.

Nationally, ACPO Communications Advisory Group produces guidance on information release, but the current guidance does not establish criteria about what crimes to issue appeals for.