West Midlands Police Spent £1.25 Million on Informants Over Five Years
West Midlands Police has spent over £1 million on paying informants over a five-year period, with total payments reaching £1.25 million between 2020 and 2025. The payments, covering Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS), were documented following a Freedom of Information request, revealing significant expenditure on covert operations.
Transparency and Public Interest
In response to the request, police officials stated: "There is a public interest in demonstrating that policing is transparent about its use of public funds and its management of covert capabilities." They emphasized that confirming or denying further information could help the public understand high-level structures around how CHIS are used and support informed debate about the appropriateness and proportionality of covert policing tactics.
Police added that public awareness of policing processes can contribute to confidence in the accountability of law enforcement. However, they noted they "can neither confirm nor deny that it holds any other information relevant to this request" due to exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act related to security matters, national security, and investigations.
Expert Opinions on Informant Use
Former Deputy Chief Constable Roger Bannister, who served as The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for covert human intelligence sources, highlighted the importance of such intelligence. He said it "helps to prevent and solve the most serious of crimes and is vital in bringing offenders to justice through the courts." Bannister described it as a "well-established and highly regulated tactic with the money paid to informants being very closely scrutinised."
Former undercover West Midlands officer Ronnie Howard supported this view, stating that cash paid to informants was public money well spent. He revealed he had once given £15,000 to a criminal, explaining: "There is a danger that if you recruit someone to be an informant who is a drug dealer, what you will find is they will be supplying information about other drug dealers - who are their competition." Howard argued that "using informants to arrest criminals is the most economical way to do it. It is an extremely cheap way to detect serious crimes."
Breakdown of Payments
The detailed breakdown of payments made by West Midlands Police to informants from 2020 to 2025 is as follows:
- 2020-2021: £272,931
- 2021-2022: £226,511
- 2022-2023: £297,240
- 2023-2024: £250,565
- 2024-2025: £206,185
This totals £1.25 million over the five-year period, underscoring the ongoing investment in covert intelligence gathering to combat crime in the region.
