Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether his Department plans to review Fixed Penalty Notices for Disorder and the length of time those notices remain on police records.

Penalty Notices for Disorder are one type of Out of Court Disposal, which allow police to deal quickly and proportionately with low-level offending without recourse to the courts.

The responsibility lies with Police forces regarding the retention of data. These records must be regularly reviewed to ensure that they remain necessary for a policing purpose, and are adequate and up to date. Records should be disposed of when there is no longer a policing purpose for retaining them.

We are working in partnership with the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) whose Charging and Out of Court Disposals strategy (2017-2021) promotes a simplified ‘two-tier’ framework in which all out of court disposals have a condition attached. The strategy asks forces to move to the simplified two-tier framework when it is operationally and financially viable. We have no separate plans to review Penalty Notices for Disorder specifically.