Wiltshire Police completes review into Clare's Law applications
The force has checked over 3,700 Domestic Violence Disclosure requests
An urgent review, into more than 3,700 disclosure requests made to Wiltshire Police under Clare's Law, has now been completed.
The force ordered the checks last October, into all applications made between April 2015 and August 2023 - after 'critical failures' were found in the service.
Detailed reviews of each request have now been finished and police say 'appropriate action has been taken'.
The force has also confirmed:
• A total of 33 failures in the service have been found – this equates to less than 1% of the 3,778 applications
• Of this, two failures have resulted in people being harmed
• Of the other failures, 14 are administrative failures and 17 are service failures, where they should have disclosed and didn’t, or where inadequate research was done
• One member of police staff remains suspended from the Force and is subject of an independent conduct investigation by the IOPC
• Five referrals have been made to the IOPC (including the initial referral) which are being independently investigated – two are linked to failures where harm has been caused, one linked to an admin failure and the final referral relates to the organisational response of two previous IOPC referrals involving the same individual in 2019 and 2020
• At its height, approximately 45 members of staff moved into the review team supported by a large number of other officers from across the force. An 'appropriate level of resourcing' on this review will continue until the end of May
Chief Constable Catherine Roper said:
“Whilst I hope our communities will take some reassurance from the fact we’ve now reviewed all of these applications, we should never forget that people were put at risk due to our failures.
“We let people down and we now know that our failures may have contributed to at least two people being harmed. This is completely unacceptable and I remain appalled that this ever happened.
“As soon as I was made aware of these failures, I ensured dedicated resources were put in place to work to understand where we are failed, who might be at risk as a result of these failures and the urgent action we needed to take.
“The completion of the 3,778 risk assessments ensured that we identified the people who required our immediate support.
“There are a small number of people who we’ve been unable to contact or where contacting them directly might not have been safe or appropriate. We will continue to attempt contact where safe to do so.
“I know we have let you down and caused additional anxiety, but I ask again for your trust and urge you to come forward if you have any concerns or information regarding people at risk of domestic abuse.
“We’ve put in place additional resources and scrutiny to ensure this important service is delivered in the right way.”
If you are considering making a new application under Clare’s Law, you can continue to request information on the Wiltshire Police website |newtab), or call 999 if anyone's in immediate danger.
A dedicated email inbox established for applicants who thought they might have been affected by the service failure will no longer be monitored.