Living with the consequences of last summer's violence

LONDON LETTER:AMRIT KHURMY's Ealing Green supermarket was destroyed on August 8th when rioters attacked, leaving her with no business and not enough insurance.

Nearly eight months on, she is still waiting to receive compensation under the 1886 Riot Damages Act, as the Metropolitan police struggle to deal with thousands of claims.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Labour leader Ed Miliband pressed prime minister David Cameron for action, saying “this is simply not good enough”.

Ever since, Mrs Khurmy and her husband, Pavi, have been struggling to get by, despite a £20,000 (€24,000) interest-free loan from Ealing Council and local charitable help.

The Met says it “fully appreciates the catastrophic effects” of the riots, and that it is dealing with the claims “in the most efficient and timely way possible”. Under the legislation, the Met deals with claims from the uninsured, while insurance companies deal with those who are insured and claim the money back later from the police.

So far, the Met has received 4,500 claims, plus 80,000 supporting documents, though problems with incomplete paperwork have not helped, they say.

The bill is likely to reach £250 million for London alone, with the Met now forecasting that half of all claims up to £50,000 and a tenth of all those above that figure will be dealt with by the end of this month.

Cameron, acknowledging that problems exist, pointed out that a number of other funds run by the department for communities and local government have paid out quickly.

“It is right, in a way, to have the Riot (Damages) Act, although it is quite out of date. However, it takes time to make the payments, and I will certainly do what I can to chase them up,” he said.

Last week, the Met produced its final investigation into the riots in a report titled Four Days in August, acknowledging the difficulties faced in dealing with the disturbances.

Of the 4,500 claims received, 1,000 were rejected as duplicates, but it insists that 181 of the 342 claims made by people such as Amrit Khurmy have been settled.

Just 396 of the 2,538 claims made by those with insurance have been settled, though the delay in dealing with the rest is blamed on insurance companies not filing details of claims.

“In some cases, it will not be possible to pay claims. That is because they fall outside the terms of the Act, for example claims of personal injury,” the Met said.

In some cases, damage cannot be directly linked to the riot “although this has been the reason for rejecting only a small number of uninsured claims”, it says.

Furthermore, claims for losses because of the interruption of business are being rejected because the 1886 Act “has never been understood to include such losses”.

Describing the riots as unprecedented in London’s history, the Met said the speed with which they spread through parts of the city “set them aside from anything that had been witnessed before”.

The riots erupted after the shooting by police of Mark Duggan in circumstances still contested. The shooting led to a peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station on August 6th.

Violence began shortly afterwards, spreading quickly throughout Haringey and evolved from anger at police “to the opportunistic looting of local shops in the knowledge that police resources were committed elsewhere”.

In all, 22 of London’s 32 boroughs were affected, fuelled by the use of social media, which encouraged some to come out and riot and co-ordinated the actions of self-appointed leaders.

Since August, the impact of social media in London has been closely examined by the Met, but also by police forces elsewhere over concerns about its impact on street disturbances.

The Met said it was clear that its ability to use such networks to engage with the public is in its infancy, and that an opportunity had been lost to use it to engage with communities.

Currently, the Met uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but it accepts that too often it is “a one-way dialogue”, where it issues appeals for witnesses to crimes, or attempts to run campaigns against gang violence.

“Like many other forces, the innovative and widespread use of social media for engagement . . . has very much been restricted either through fear of staff misuse attracting negative publicity or a lack of skilled staff to operate its use.

“The Metropolitan Police Service accepts that it has been too risk-averse in its use of social media and that this is not a viable state of affairs to sustain,” the report goes on.

In the months since, courts have dealt every week with prosecutions over the riots, with a former actor in Harry Potter films, whose career went nowhere subsequently, being jailed for two years on Tuesday.

Back in Ealing, the Khurmys are trying to rebuild their lives, and their two daughters, Kiran and Simmi, continue to enjoy the bicycles given to them by a local charity last Christmas.