Independent Police Complaints Commission, R (on the application of) v Pearman & Ors

Under section 76(7)(b) of the Police Act 1996, a police complaints authority may require information reasonably needed to decide whether to recommend or direct disciplinary proceedings. That power does not itself authorise the authority to require an investigation or officer interviews. The distinction is between obtaining information already in the possession of, or available to, the chief officer and taking steps to generate new information. The relevance of abuse of process, legitimate expectation and delay is ordinarily a matter for the authority when deciding whether disciplinary proceedings should be brought. Delay may also make information no longer reasonably required. Where proposed enquiries depend on unreliable recollection of events many years earlier, and officers may lawfully decline to answer, relief may properly be refused as oppressive and detrimental to good administration.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission sought judicial review of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s refusal to provide further information about complaints arising from the arrest and detention of a 13-year-old boy in 2003. The complaints concerned alleged excessive force by a police dog handler and failures by a custody officer.

The police investigation had concluded that the allegations were unsubstantiated, and forms 163A had been served on the officers. The IPCC later treated the matter as still open and requested further enquiries and information under section 76(7)(b) of the Police Act 1996. The central issues were whether the IPCC had made a final decision, whether the requests sought information or a further investigation, and whether relief should be granted given the delay and the officers’ position.

1. The claim was dismissed and no relief was granted.

2. The letter of 1 March 2005 was objectively provisional. Although poorly and unclearly drafted, its language that the IPCC was minded to conclude that misconduct proceedings could not be justified did not amount to a final decision. The police’s understanding that the complaints had ended could not alter the objective meaning of the letter.

3. Questions about abuse of process, legitimate expectation arising from the forms 163A, and the lapse of time were not, in themselves, irrelevant to the IPCC’s functions. They would be relevant when the IPCC decided whether to recommend or direct disciplinary proceedings under sections 76(1) or 76(3) of the Police Act 1996. The passage of time was also relevant to whether information was reasonably required under section 76(7)(b).

4. There is a distinction between requiring information and requiring an investigation. Information under section 76(7)(b) means information in the possession of, or available to, the chief officer or his officers. Requiring an officer to be interviewed is a step taken to obtain information and is therefore an investigative requirement, not merely a request to supply information. The authorities concerning reopening investigations did not remove that distinction.

5. The court did not need finally to determine the extent of the statutory power where an officer could refuse to answer or where the answer might incriminate the officer or expose him to disciplinary penalty. Nor did the distinction render the statutory power ineffective, since the IPCC could supervise an investigation under section 72(1)(c).

6. By the time of the requests, more than six years had passed. The proposed interviews concerned matters the officers could not reliably be expected to remember, and they retained a right not to provide the information. Granting relief in respect of requirements 2 to 4 would therefore be oppressive and detrimental to good administration. Although the records sought by requirement 5 would otherwise have been competent, no useful purpose would be served by ordering their production.