Any views would be appreciated on this one. I give H & S advice to various magistrates, crown and county courts. A complaints investigator working for the Police has requested a copy of one of our incident report forms, as a defendant has made a complaint about his treatment by Officers, alleging they used excessive force which caused injuries. I have not seen a copy of the incident report form myself (we have a separate Security Officer) but apparently 2 members of staff and 1 legal adviser completed forms as to what they witnessed. The Legal Team have stated that they are not prepared for information from the legal adviser to be released. We do of course have a reporting system in place, and report relevant incidents under RIDDOR to the HSE, but can anyone give a steer on the procedures in this case - does the Police request override any request for information to remain 'in-house'? The Police have stated that if statements cannot be released, they will request a report from a court official detaling what occurred that day. The defendant apparently had a recording video pen on him at the time of his appearance, so has video footage of what happened.

Your legal adviser could be wearing one of at least two hats. One hat says "witness" the other says "legal adviser". It gets confusing if he's wearing both at the same time. Which is he wearing? My instinct like the others above is that you need clear advice but I would ask the legal adviser to fillet his material so as to pull all the first hand witness information together. I suspect that the earlier this factual component is given to the Police the better without needing to get to the forcing stage. But take advice.

Surely the injured person can request a copy and forward it to the complaints people. Same difference but you get the consent to share any personal info on the form. If, in fact, the concern is over divulging personal information about the injured person without their consent. If not, I'm baffled.