Information relating to victims and members of the public

The personal details of victims, informants and witnesses should normally only be provided to another agency with the written consent of the individual concerned. In the context of general work undertaken by partnerships, there will normally be no justification for exchanging personal information in relation to individuals who fall within these categories, where the circumstances in which the information was provided give rise to a duty of confidence.

Any exchange of such information should only ever be considered or undertaken where the public interest would be profoundly affected or there was a risk of harm to the individual concerned or others.

It is of course open to the holder of the information to either write to a victim, informant or witness seeking their consent to disclose personal information to another agency or to forward correspondence on behalf of another agency to the individual concerned. Nevertheless, such approaches should always be kept to the minimum.

These requirements were clearly highlighted in the case of Turner v. The Serious Office. Lord Hoffman commented that:

“many people give assistance to the Police and other investigatory agencies...without coming within the category of informers ...they naturally accept that the interests of justice may in the end require the publication of the information or at any rate its disclosure to the accused for the purposes of enabling him to conduct his defence. However, there seems to be no reason why the law should not encourage their assistance by offering them the assurance that, subject to these overriding requirements, their privacy and confidentiality will be respected”.

In practice disclosure would normally only ever be made for policing purposes. It would also be necessary to balance the public interest in disclosure with requirements of the Human Rights Act. Each case would need to be considered individually on its merits and legal advice sought, where necessary and disclosure would still need to comply with the Data Protection Act and any other relevant legislation.

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