FOI 15453-25 - Enter and Search Complaints

Request:

1. The number of times your force received a complaint regarding your force’s legal right to enter and search a property.

2. The number of these complaints that were upheld.

3. The number of these complaints that were upheld for entering the wrong property.

4. The total amount paid in damages from these complaints.

4. b. Can you give the highest amount paid in an individual case, the reason the search was deemed illegal (for example: wrong address, no search warrant) and the location please. Please anonymise as/if necessary for it to be included in your response.

Can you provide the data for 2022, 2023, 2024 and from 01/01/25 – 30/06/25 (inclusive) presented in calendar years please.

Response

Question 1:
2022 – 2
2023 – 2
2024 – 3
2025 – 2

Question 2:
Some of the complaints were dealt with by the OPFCC, rather than Northamptonshire Police. In line with current guidance, the OPFCC record complaints as “resolved” or “not resolved” rather than “upheld” or “not upheld”. A resolved complaint is one which has been resolved to the complainant’s satisfaction, even if no further action has been identified. A complaint recorded as resolved does not necessarily mean that wrongdoing was identified. In the spirit of aiding you to answer your request, I have included the outcomes of the complaints as they are recorded in Northamptonshire Police’s systems, regardless of whether they were dealt with by Northamptonshire Police or the OPFCC.

The service provided was acceptable:
2022 – 2
2023 – 0
2024 – 1
2025 – 0

Resolved:
2022 – 0
2023 – 1
2024 – 2
2025 – 2

Case still live:
2022 – 0
2023 – 1
2024 – 0
2025 – 0

Question 3:
See above.

Question 4: £0
b. N/A

The numerical data presented in this response is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.

Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom of Information responses.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data, we ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.