Bookkeeping Clients affected by riots can claim compensation from local Police authority - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

Dalbir · Senior Member

Bookkeeping Clients affected by riots can claim compensation from local Police authority

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Damages can be claimed from the Joint Police Board using the form at the end of this: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksro/1921/1536/pdfs/uksro_19211536_en.pdf%20

You have 42 days in which to claim.

Of course, if you're insured, just go to them and they deal with it all.

Kris

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

I heard this on the radio yesterday and it's not clicking.

The discussion was in relation to uninsured shop owners being able to claim compensation but surely the fact that they are uninsured makes them compliant with the act. They had the option to insure, they chose not to in order to save money, they suffer the consequences.

Same principle as bookkeepers choosing not to have PII.

I know that the riots are a terrible thing but why should business X pay a fortune in insurance where business Y pays nothing but still gets reimbursed for damages.

Seems to defeat the whole idea of anyone ever insuring their businesses.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

No Shaun. The idea was that we all pay tax. Part of this pays the police force to protect us and our property. If they fail to do so, and specifically due to a riot of 12 or more people, we as taxpayers, are due compensation.

And the insurance companies can actually recover any money they pay out from the joint police boards.

Kris

Dalbir · Senior Member

Hi Kris

Are the Police boards funded through local authorities or national government?

Dalbir

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Police Boards have a tripartite structure between the Chief Constable, the Home Office (Scottish Government here, and I assume devolved in Wales and NI) and the local authority with their funding being split between central and local government.

I would assume for this central government will pick up the tab, but who knows?

Kris

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Whilst I cannot disagree with you being technically correct there is something fundamentally wrong with the whole scenario.

The real difference here is whether you claim from the insurance company or the government meaning that insurance is useless and a waste of money for any business to take out!

Following that same logic we can also claim compensation then if our children fail their exams as teachers are paid from tax to teach children and if they fail to do that then it's quickly hit the speed dial to claims direct!

Our taxes should be going to maintain the infrastructure and not compensate those who choose not to protect themselves. The exception to that would of course be gross negligence but that is not what is happening here.

The riots are simply an excuse for criminality and shops have the option to insure against theft and damage. Failure to hold sufficient insurance is seeking to gain advantage over your competitors by playing Russian rullette with your own business.

Where my arguement falls down of course is that many insurance policies exclude civil unrest in which case I can see an arguement for assistance (not compensation) for those who insured their business properly but were caught out by the civil disorder clause.

Lets just take an example of the above and see how you think it stacks up.

Two businesses, one spends 5% of turnover on insurance the other doesn't and can afford to undercut the first business by 5% so stealing customers.

Riots happen.

Why should both businesses receive compensation when one had taken precautions and suffered for it and the other had taken no precautions and been doing very nicely at the cost of the other business as a result.

Anyway, as I opened, you are technically correct but I just don't see this as being a fair or actually feasible system. Thinking about the current civil unrest and the state of the countries finances I certainly would not hold my breath for government compensation.

Also, on the radio yesterday when they were talking about it my understanding was that you need to hire a QC in order to get the compensation. Sounded very much more like you were sueing the government rather than merely filling out a few forms. Must admit that I was only half listening at the time so I could have misheard that part.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

While I don't disagree with you. Insurance covers far more than just riots. The government themselves have also decided to extend the period in which you must make a claim from 14 days, as laid down in the act, to 42 days.

I think we will find this system now being put to bed. I can see a growth is civil unrest in the coming years and the government will not want to cover the costs of these. This has been a bit of a Pandora's box, and unfortunately now the lid is off, I don't see how we can get it back on. People now realise that if they act in large numbers the police are virtually powerless to stop them, and as we heard from so many involved in the unrest, they know there is little the courts will actually do. The law abiding population know this too, it just seems to be our elected politicians who are fooling themselves that all is well.

Until the criminal justice system (sounds weird criminal justice, what about victim justice?) is overhauled and given some real teeth I can't see it going any other way. Some of the sentences handed down so far have been pitiful.

I feel I now need to add the following to my post:

The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, not of my business, my force, or the book-keepers forum

The views expressed are subject to the terms and conditions of the book-keepers forum. My post may be edited without my consent or knowledge.

Dalbir · Senior Member

Hi Kris

Would be interesting to see through which taxes; funding will be provided to rebuild businesses.

Will be an extra blow to residents of affected areas if claims are made by the bigger businesses (especially if as mentioned by Shaun above, even for insured businesses, their insurance does not cover damage and losses from riots) and the Police have to recover some of the funds from the respective local authorities.

Dalbir

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

I feel the cuts in the police service could pale into insignificance when we finally see the true cost of this riot. The last estimate I heard was somewhere between £10m and £100m, you could drive a coach and horses through that. It makes you wonder if some of it could have been avoided if the cobra meeting took place on Sunday instead of waiting till Monday. Or if we had some leaders with some backbone. On an aside, I thought it was quite interesting to see Lybia calling on the UN to impose sanctions as it was clear our public wished a change of regime.

Ditto previous disclaimer

Kris

Dalbir · Senior Member

Hi Kris

ditto your disclaimer. this is a general discussion between geographically dispersed folks with an interest in the bookkeeping and accounting arena.

Dalbir

-- Edited by Dalbir on Thursday 11th of August 2011 05:15:53 PM

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Kris,

nice answer.

on that last point, the only people that can change your posts are site admin and myself.

Site admin tend to remove links and delete posts rather than amend them.

I occassionally replace a post saying why I removed the content. There has been one quite specific exception where a member requested (and justified) that her very first post was changed to make her more difficult to identify by her employer.

Anyway, you can normally identify where I've been as I'll have replaced the whole contents of a post in Red and bold.

Note also that every time that I do change anything there is an admin overhead in that I have to write a report to site admin showing what the post was before, why I made the change, what the post was afterwards. This is kept on file and keeps everything sweet with the sites PII.

If Site admin disagree with any change, deletion or banning order that I enforce then I believe that they can reinstate the person and reinstating the post would simply be a matter of taking the original back out of my email and posting it back where it was originally.

To date however nothing that I've actioned has been overridden.

One bit of your post made me smile as not often that we get the Human Rights Act being mentioned in a post. In fact, might be wrong but I think that may be a first for the site.

kjmcculloch83 · Expert

Hi Shaun,

Given that I'm a special constable, it's not the first time I have had my force print out posts from some forum or other where I have given my views. It's more to remind them that I am a private person too, and that just because they print a post, it is not always as I posted it.

Given most of our posts are bookkeeping related, I would never normally put it on here, but with the content I thought better safe than sorry.

Kris