Police pay £116,000 to informants

Nottinghamshire Police spent £116,000 on payments to informants in one year, a report has shown.

An internal audit report carried out by Nottinghamshire County Council showed the force exceeded its budget for informants for 2006-07 by £10,000.

The report also highlighted that the system for payments to Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) could be open to bogus claims.

Nottinghamshire Police said they could not comment on the matter.

Suitable safeguards

The report stated that the form used to authorise a payment "is simple in design and so raises the potential for bogus forms to be generated and presented for payment".

"Although our sample testing did not identify any such cases, we [auditors] consider this to be a weakness that needs to be addressed," the report added.

It is not standard practice to publish details of informant payments, but in figures obtained through audit legislation, the Metropolitan Police in London paid out more than £2.2m to informants for the same period.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "All law enforcement agencies and public authorities should strive to maintain a balance between the need for supervision of payments and the need to protect not only the payment process but also the individuals who are involved in it.

"Systems for payment must be safeguarded against any unjust or inappropriate allegations with suitable levels for approval of payments and a requirement that all payments must be witnessed and corroborated with incremental levels of seniority depending on the size of the reward.

"Within police services it is open to Chief Officers to make details of payments made to sources available to the Police Authority and for the Police Authority to scrutinise the payments made to sources as part of its audit and assurance responsibilities."