IPCO Annual Report 2017
how the CHIS engages with the organisation, how their intelligence is used or disseminated,
the specific tasking and the way this affects the CHIS’s exposure to risk.
3.21
The AO must review a CHIS regularly during the lifetime of an authorisation, to assess whether
the authorisation is still justified on the grounds that it remains necessary and proportionate.
This review must take account of the risk assessment. Authorisations, therefore, can be
renewed when it is necessary and proportionate, or cancelled when no longer necessary.
3.22
The authorisation and use of CHIS is a challenging activity and there is significant responsibility
on the authorising body to manage CHIS properly. This begins before the CHIS is recruited and
continues well beyond the end of the authorisation. It follows that public authorities need
robust management processes and sufficient resources in place, with appropriately trained
personnel, to be able effectively to manage CHIS.
3.23
Local Authorities in England and Wales can only use CHIS in accordance with the Protection
of Freedoms Act 2012 and Statutory Instrument 2012/1500, which require a magistrate
to approve the deployment. The proposed activity must be shown to be necessary for
the prevention or detection of a crime which carries a minimum sentence of six months’
imprisonment, or because it relates to an offence of selling alcohol or tobacco products
to minors.
How IPCO oversees these powers
3.24
By way of overall approach, we inspect CHIS and surveillance activity at a single inspection,
during which between one and several inspectors will attend for up to a week, depending
on the size of the authority and the extent to which the powers were utilised. For the
intelligence agencies and the MOD, we inspected CHIS use at our main inspections in
the spring and autumn of 2017. For LEAs we conducted 59 inspections during 2017.
3.25
As a generality, we now aim to inspect each council in England, Wales and Scotland once
every three years. We inspected 103 local authorities in 2017.10 But whenever necessary,
we will conduct an interim or follow-up inspection if the local authority’s compliance is
poor or during a period of change when an earlier visit is likely to have utility. We also
inspected 11 Fire and Rescue Services.11 Eight of these inspections were on site and three
were desktop inspections. In addition we inspected 20 other public authorities (e.g.
government regulators); these were all on-site inspections.
3.26
We also inspected 11 Fire and Rescue Services.12 Eight of these inspections were on site and
three were desktop inspections. In addition we inspected 20 other public authorities (e.g.
government regulators); these were all on-site inspections.
3.27
During on-site inspections of a public authority, IPCO will scrutinise the CHIS documentation
in order to assess all the relevant aspects of the process of authorising and running the CHIS.
This will inevitably include the recruitment process and we will consider, amongst other
things, the number of times the public authority met or contacted a potential CHIS recruit
and whether he or she provided information before the authorisation was in place. We
review the details of any contact with the CHIS, assessing always whether useful intelligence
10 60 on-site inspections and 43 desktop or remote inspections.
11 which are not within the constitution of a Local Authority.
12 which are not within the constitution of a Local Authority.
17