What we publish
Police oversight in the UK produces a great deal of data. The Independent Office for Police Conduct publishes complaint volumes and, more usefully, what happened when those complaints were reviewed. data.police.uk publishes every recorded stop and search, with its outcome. Almost none of it reaches the people it is about.
We compile it per force and publish it as readable pages. Currently that covers 44 UK police forces for complaints, reviews and deaths following police contact; 41 of those forces for stop and search, because three publish nothing to that dataset; and 43 for use of force. The counts differ by dataset and we state which is which rather than rounding them all up to the largest number.
How the figures are produced
Every number on this site is computed directly from the published source data. No figure is estimated, adjusted, or generated by a language model.
Where a force did not record something, we say so rather than working around it. Rates are calculated only over the records where the relevant field was actually completed, and each one is published with the numerator, the denominator, and the proportion of records the field covers. Where coverage is too thin for a percentage to mean anything, we do not publish a percentage.
What this site is not
It is an information resource. It does not provide legal advice, it does not act for anyone, and nothing on it is a substitute for advice about your own situation.
Our commercial interest, stated plainly
Copious Ltd, which publishes this site, also operates a claims referral service. That is a commercial interest in the subject matter of the data we publish, and you should weigh it when you read our figures.
We think the right response to that is not to hide it but to make the work checkable. So: every figure carries its numerator, its denominator and its source. The methodology is published. The limitations and the gaps are published. The underlying files are downloadable under a licence that permits reuse, including by people who want to contradict us. If a number here is wrong, you can prove it is wrong without asking our permission, and we would rather you told us.
We take no position on any individual case, make no allegation against any officer or force, and do not present statistical disparity as proof of wrongdoing by anyone.
The open data and the licence · Corrections
Who runs it
PoliceComplaint.com is a trading style of Copious Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 11437826, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under ZA453238. Copious Ltd is part of Copious Group Ltd, company number 13308502.
Corrections
If you believe a figure on this site is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it. Source data is periodically restated by the bodies that publish it, and we would rather be corrected than be wrong.