PADDs, which stands for Police Authorised Data Downloads, is a project that has been led by Emergent Network Intelligence in association with Northumbria University, the Knowledge Transfer Partnership, West Midlands Police, National Salvage Group, as well as other key stakeholders providing guidance and feedback throughout the process, being the Information Commissioners Office, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
The Project has been in development since mid-2010, went live as a Proof of Concept with West Midlands Police Force on 25th January 2012 and was endorsed by ACPO as Good Practice in July 2012.
What is the Key Objective?
The key objective of PADDs is to reduce the amount of time it takes for an insurance company to be informed that one of their vehicles has been involved in a Road Traffic Collision (RTC) or has been recovered after being stolen.
This process is happening every day throughout the UK as part of the ‘business-as-usual’ processes that happen as part of a vehicle recovery, the PADDs process simply reduces the amount of time this process takes which in turn reduces the costs associated with any potential claim that may arise from the incident.
How does it work?
The PADDs process currently focuses on those recoveries where the police force has exercised its statutory rights to arrange the recovery of the vehicle and includes the following key stages:
- When a Police officer attends the scene of an incident and chooses to exercise their statutory powers to have a vehicle recovered, at the point of instructing one of their Authorised Vehicle Recovery Operators some of the details of the instruction are also passed, real time via secure web services, to the PADDs system.
- Once the key data has been transferred to the PADDs system (VRM, Incident Date and location of the vehicle), an automated ‘MID Lookup’ is carried out which checks the Motor Insurers Database (MID) to identify the insurer with a potential interest in the vehicle.
- The PADDs system then alerts the insurer, over a secure portal, that a vehicle with that specific VRM has been involved in an incident which has led to the vehicle being recovered to the specific recovery agent’s compound (and will therefore be incurring statutory charges).
- At this point the insurer can then follow their standard procedures to contact the policy holder to confirm whether or not they wish to make a claim on their insurance.
NOTE: This is simply a notification process that already happens; the PADDs system improves efficiency by speeding this process up. This does not constitute any sort of claim notification and it is entirely down to the policy holder as to whether they wish to make a claim or not.
At no point does the PADDs system receive or store any policyholder’s names or addresses, the only sensitive information held is a vehicle registration number.
Some key objectives that the PADDs process has from the outset are:
- To ensure that Police Forces do not have to change their Business as Usual Processes.
- To ensure that Police Forces incur no cost at any stage of the process.
- To ensure that the Information Commissioners Office is satisfied with the process.
- To ensure that relevant data is only ever sent to Insurers via secure links and stored within an ISO 27001 framework and infrastructure.
- To ensure the Insurance Industry is given the best possible opportunity to contact their Policyholder in order to minimise any potential claim costs.
- To ensure that no data is transferred to any company other than the Insurance Company listed on the Motor Insurance Database.
