Police forces are bound by the Equality Act 2010 both in how they treat individuals and in how they make policy. The time limits in this area are the shortest anywhere in this site.
Two separate duties
A police force is bound by the Equality Act 2010 in two distinct ways, and they lead to different places.
As a service provider under Part 3 of the Act, a force must not discriminate against, harass or victimise a person in the provision of its services. That covers direct discrimination, indirect discrimination under section 19, and discrimination arising from disability.
Separately, section 149 imposes the public sector equality duty.
"A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act."
Equality Act 2010, section 149(1)(a)The duty is to have due regard, not to achieve an outcome. That duty is about how policy and practice are formed, and it is enforced by judicial review rather than by a compensation claim.
What the disparity figures do and do not establish
Of the 41 forces publishing stop and search data, 36 record ethnicity well enough for a comparison to mean anything. Across those, Black people were recorded as searched at about 4.5 times the rate that their share of the resident population would suggest.
That number is contested, and it should be. It uses the resident population as the denominator, which is not the same as the population available to be searched in a given place at a given hour. Disparity is not, by itself, evidence of unlawful discrimination in any individual case, and no court would treat it as such.
What a statistical pattern can do is support an inference where other evidence points the same way, which matters because direct evidence of discrimination is rare. The full report sets out the denominator problem in detail.
Time limits are unusually short
How long you have to bring a claim
Publishing a general figure here would be worse than publishing nothing, because a reader who relies on the wrong one loses their claim outright. Get your own position checked, and do it early rather than late.
The free routes, before any claim
A complaint to the force costs nothing and does not stop you claiming later. If the force's answer does not stand up you can apply for a review, and across all forces reporting, 24.5% of completed reviews found the force's own outcome was not reasonable and proportionate.
The three routes, and what each one gets you.
Start with your force
Complaint handling, review outcomes and stop and search practice vary enormously between forces. Every force has its own page here with its own figures.