Hookway bail verdict

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act I would like to request the following:

· Total costs incurred by your force in response to the Hookway bail verdict in May 2011 (later repealed by legislation)

· If possible, and within the time limit, could you also provide figures on the officer and staff time spent dealing with the implications of the verdict.

· If the above cannot be quantified, could you provide with some guidance on how the Hookway bail verdict impacted on your force.

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

There is no information held. The costs and time spent on this issue have not been calculated.

The following assessment has been provided by the current head of our Criminal Justice Unit in relation to the generalisation of the last part of your request;

Firstly I have consulted with custody around the impact in their domain. This is very difficult to quantify in terms of this request but the custody lead believes that the impact was actually minimal in terms of extra burden etc - if anything it potentially assisted in the flow through custody as fewer persons were actually bailed.

Actually the force found some beneficial aspects to the ruling as it allowed for a more robust audit of those actually on bail and allowed the organisation to consider working practices and the appropriateness of use for the future.

The main burden of the ruling was felt within the force solicitors office who were engaged in the wider national debate around the legal position. Again the legal view is that operational impact was minimal but in terms of their time - equated to 35 hours at £100 per hour.

I guess that consideration of the rulings also equated to a days time for the Chief Superintendent and myself (Detective Chief Inspector)