British Transport Police criticised over data backlog

British Transport Police (BTP) holds 10,000 boxes containing information that has not been inputted onto the Police National Database (PND), its chief constable has confirmed.

Speaking at a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday (January 20), Paul Crowther said the boxes contained a variety of material, including case files, time-sheets and financial reports.

The force has discussed how to deal with the boxes with the Information Commissioner, because the type and value of the information in the boxes is not fully known: “We must take into regard what type of information it is, for example if it is classified as Management of Police Information 1 (MOPI1) we have to keep it for 100 years. We have to find a balance between date-based destruction or going through them manually.”

The issue came to light after whistle-blowers alleged that officers and the public were at risk because of BTP’s poor data management.

Speaking to the BBC, former Detective Chief Inspector Jon Williams, one of the whistle-blowers, said there were basic inaccuracies in the information BTP was inputting onto the PND and in one case information related to a sex offender was incorrectly attached to a different offender with a similar name.

“The worst case scenario is that BTP holds information that could be used in either solving or preventing another Soham [the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 following a failure to record and share data about the perpetrator Ian Huntley],” he said.

In a statement, BTP added: “We recognise our obligations to record information accurately. In January 2014, we carried out an internal review and identified ways to make our records more searchable when using the PND. As a result of this review, measures were put in place to ensure data was recorded and linked appropriately.”

During the meeting, Mr Crowther defended the accountability structure at BTP that had led to the data not being inputted: “Our structure works very well, for the stakeholders as well as the public. It provides them with a very high degree of transparency about what we do.”

He said that the backlog had built up because BTP has 150 different sites, and in the past they would archive their own documents: “This wasn’t done in a corporate and standardised way – we have put it right going forward, we just have to work it out going backwards.”

HASC chair Keith Vaz described the situation as “very bad”, adding: “This is not right Mr Crowther, we want to see this put right immediately.”