Many of you have engaged me to do in house training on surveillance law and Part 2 of RIPA. A common theme running through the questions our trainers are asked, is the lack of clarity and guidance around completing the RIPA forms for authorising Directed Surveillance and use/conduct of a Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS).

Poor form filling is a standard criticism made by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners (OSC) when doing inspections of local authorities. Up to now there has been no published guidance on how to complete the forms properly. This is essential if officers want to take advantage of the RIPA Shield (section 27 defence).

With this in mind, Ibrahim Hasan have developed detailed guidance on how to complete the standard Home Office RIPA forms for Directed Surveillance and CHIS. It consists of each form reproduced with detailed notes on how to complete each section. All the forms are included from application, through to review, renewal and cancellation.

The guidance is available as a hard copy for £99 plus vat. You can also buy it in electronic form together (£499 plus vat) with a perpetual multi user license to upload onto your Intranet site internal use only) or to make as many copies as you need for internal use. You can also amend and customise the guidance to suit your organisation's specific surveillance operations.

If you would like to receive a hard copy for inspection, please email me with your name and address. We will then send you a hard copy which you may decide to buy or return within two weeks. If you are constantly having to answer routine queries about the RIPA forms from client departments, you may wish to let them know about this.