News and Events 

Media service standards

Corporate Communications sticks to the following media service standards:

• Be open and honest with the media at all times. Only withhold information if legal, operational or investigative processes, or if our duty of care to victims, could be compromised.
• Names of victims – of crimes or of road traffic accidents – will not be released without the victim’s consent.
• All media will be treated fairly and equally.
• At least one person will be available to take urgent media enquiries 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. To contact the emergency on-call press officer, please call 01865 846699, where you will be given directions on how to contact them.
• If, for any reason, our website is down, information will be made available to journalists on the Press Bureau voicebank on 01865 846011.
• We aim to give a full, timely and accurate response to reasonable and courteous media enquiries. Every effort will be made to meet deadlines – however, the more notice we have of your enquiry, the greater the chance of a quick response.
• All Thames Valley Police news releases will be published on this website on the day of issue on weekdays, and at weekends and Bank Holidays whenever possible.
• We adhere to European Human Rights legislation, the Data Protection Act, and the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (ACPO) Media Advisory Group guidelines.
• We will maintain a plan for handling media interest during a major incident, and perform a practice exercise of this plan at least once a year.
• We will conduct a media audit once a year to gather feedback on our media relations service and we will act on the feedback that we receive.