Number of private prosecutions commenced each year

[All Line Rover]

Are there any easy accessible stats on the number of private prosecutions commenced each year by the rail industry in England and Wales?

Ideally I would like both a total figure for the industry and a breakdown by company.

 

[ainsworth74]

Probably not! I very much doubt that the MoJ collect it centrally as the cases will be started across the country in many different magistrates courts. But it could be worth an FOI to check. I assume the TOCs will know individually how many prosecutions they bring so an FOI to those that are subject to FOI could at least get a picture from a subset of the industry, similarly for TfL I'm sure they'll know as well.

But I suspect that legwork will be required to get that information. Happy to be shown wrong but just a feeling that it isn't something that is being released as part of a statistical package anywhere already.

 

[pedr]

Principles of open justice mean that there should be some kind of availability of the records held by the courts, though I don't know which elements could be acquired through FOI requests. It is possible to view each day's list of SJP cases (https://www.court-tribunal-hearings.service.gov.uk/summary-of-publications?locationId=9) but it would take months of checking and processing the information every day to get to the information you need.

Slightly more info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...fact-sheets/fact-sheet-single-justice-service

 

[MrJeeves]

But it could be worth an FOI to check. I assume the TOCs will know individually how many prosecutions they bring so an FOI to those that are subject to FOI could at least get a picture from a subset of the industry, similarly for TfL I'm sure they'll know as well.

One was submitted to Northern a couple of weeks back I think, and I submitted one to TPE: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/travel_incident_reports_settleme#incoming-2506026

 

[KirkstallOne]

Principles of open justice mean that there should be some kind of availability of the records held by the courts, though I don't know which elements could be acquired through FOI requests. It is possible to view each day's list of SJP cases (https://www.court-tribunal-hearings.service.gov.uk/summary-of-publications?locationId=9) but it would take months of checking and processing the information every day to get to the information you need.

Slightly more info here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...fact-sheets/fact-sheet-single-justice-service

I was meaning to write a cloud app to scrape that page everyday and gather the stats. Being a pdf makes it a bit tricky though.