Category: North Yorks Police
The Inn of Last Resort
The oft-maligned police complaints system is well overdue for a complete overhaul. Much has been written on the topic, including by me. Particularly on the topic of the ludicrous and superfluous Code of Ethics propagated by the College of Policing (Read more here).
One of the noisiest champions of reform is Julia Mulligan, the newly re-elected Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire (pictured below). When we first met in August 2014, the topic dominated our conversation.
My viewpoint, as an experienced police complaints advocate, is that reform is urgently required to change the focus from findings of misconduct, under a complex labyrinth of legislation, to one of ‘did the incident complained of occur’ and the police providing a swift and appropriate remedy.
In many of the cases in which I become involved a simple apology, at the outset, would have sufficed. The most famous of those was the case of well-known Wakefield businessman Anthony Ramsden, assaulted by PSU officers at Elland Road football stadium. Anthony went to the now-defunct Holbeck police station the following day, seeking only an apology, and was told by a senior officer: ‘You are wasting your time. This f*****g complaint is going nowhere’. Five woeful and hugely expensive police investigations, five IPCC appeals (four of which were upheld) and a judicial review application occupied the ensuing four years. Some of the findings of Deputy High Court Judge, Stephen Morris QC, are now regularly used authorities by the legal profession in civil cases involving the IPCC or police forces (Read full judgment here).
But the police preoccupation with not attaching blame to individual or groups of officers, or protecting the force’s reputation (perceived or otherwise), very often gets in the way of that. Lies and cover-up become embedded in the DNA of police forces. More crucially, gilt edged opportunities to enhance the public standing of the police – by dealing with complaints quickly, courteously and efficiently – are lost.
This statement broadly represents Julia’s position: ‘As it stands the police complaints system is broken. It is bureaucratic, complex, slow and lacks independence. This can have profound consequences on individuals who may be in very difficult circumstances. Police officers, too, can wait months for complaints to be resolved, very often with a cloud hanging over their heads’.
But the truth of the matter is that her own office, based in a leafy Harrogate street, and the force’s Professional Standards Department are two of the worst offenders in abusing the police complaints system – and I have recent and damning evidence to prove that.
I have met Julia Mulligan twice over the past two years and find her likeable, charming and engaging. She is a Yorkshire hill farm girl made good, and no-one could doubt her commitment, and capacity for hard work, in her Commissioner role.
I also have boundless admiration for the caring and compassionate way in which she champions the cause of victims of crime and those with mental health issues in North Yorkshire. Victims of crime (and occasionally the mentally challenged) is the core focus of my work, too. But at the other end of the scale by opposing the police (and often the CPS) over miscarriages of justice. The most high profile of which is, of course, the soon to be heard appeal against the conviction of ex-PC Danny Major, following an outside police force investigation that I was instrumental in securing (read more on Operation Lamp here).
Our differences of opinion, usually expressed in cordial terms, concern how I view the discharging of Julia’s statutory function of holding the chief constable to account. She believes in the ‘partnership’ principle. I maintain that the chief constable ‘takes the mickey’ and keeps her in the dark on key issues, when it suits him.
For the past sixteen months my focus, as an investigative journalist, has been on police misconduct – and potential misfeasance – in the ranks of the North Yorkshire force. My attention was drawn away from the more familiar ground of West Yorkshire Police, and their across-the-Pennine neighbours in Greater Manchester, by a civil harassment claim mounted by NYP against two fellow journalists.
It has certainly been an eye opener, as my investigations into two NYP Operations, styled Rome and Hyson has uncovered a tangled web of lies, deceit and a grotesque misuse of public funds on the grand scale. Hyson is the codename given by NYP to the civil court action. Rome is the failed criminal investigation that preceded it.
I have written a number of forensic pieces on the topic which dig deep into the mire into which NYP have sunk over Rome and Hyson. Two of the most damning in the series can be read in full here and here.
North Yorkshire Police are, understandably, highly displeased at having their dirty washing aired in public in this way and, as a consequence, my work as a journalist is now obstructed at every turn – and I am smeared by senior officers whenever the opportunity arises. The police, more used to controlling a tame local and regional media, are simply not used to ‘push back’ from independent operators who refuse to be intimidated. I include fellow journalist and justice campaigner, Nigel Ward, in that group.
Nigel, incidentally, was the also the author of an informative North Yorkshire Enquirer ‘In My View’ piece on Julia Mulligan and the broken police complaints system. (Read in full here).
Formal misconduct complaints have been lodged, by both Nigel and myself, against a number of senior North Yorkshire officers as a result of their unethical and unprofessional conduct towards the two of us. These include outrageous, and entirely untrue, accusations by chief officers that we have conspired together to commit criminal offences and contempt of court. The formal complaint documents lodged by me can be viewed here. Nigel’s are in a similar vein.
Desperate not to have to refer the complaints to the IPCC, or face the prospect of an outside police force proportionately investigating the complaints and the wider shambles of Operations Rome and Hyson, the police and the PCC’s office have visited the Inn of Last Resort: Label the complaints as ‘vexatious’, ‘oppressive’ and an ‘abuse of the complaints system’. The outcome delivered by Simon Dennis, acting Chief Executive for PCC Julia Mulligan can be read in full here. A similar outcome was provided by DI Steve Fincham on behalf of the force.
In publishing documents this way, the public can decide for themselves the respective merits of the complaints, decisions not to record them and the appeals to the IPCC. Neither Nigel Ward, nor I, have anything to hide and it will be interesting to gauge the response of the police and PCC’s office to more dirty washing held up for public examination.
Most justice campaigners are familiar with the term ‘vexatious’ as at one time or another they, or complaints they have been made, will have been labelled as such. It is what public servants are trained to do. Particularly if they are Common Purpose graduates and they have run out of excuses as to why they will not deal with the complainant (or complaints) within the appropriate legislative or regulatory framework. The most spectacular example of this is Sir Dan Crompton labelling bereaved Hillsborough campaigners as ‘vindictive, vexatious and cruel’. Read my 2013 piece on this topic here.
Deeply disgusting and disgraceful though the unrepentant Crompton’s remarks were, they should be taken in the context that every day someone, somewhere, will be smeared by a public official as a ‘vexatious’ or ‘persistent’ complainant. Irrespective of the merits of their case. Inferring mental health issues is another favoured smear tactic.
This, sadly, is the society we live in today and it is only through the dignity and tenacity of the Hillsborough families and survivors that the landscape will now change – and those same smearing public officials brought more readily and efficiently to book.
Returning to the Ward and Wilby complaints, the police and PCC’s office were again not expecting a ‘push back’ from the two journalists, but robust appeals which make both Mr Dennis (pictured above), formerly Force Solicitor for North Yorkshire Police, and DI Fincham look foolish, grounded in their apparent lack of knowledge of applicable law, regulations and guidance have now been drafted and submitted to the IPCC.
My appeal to the IPCC against Mr Dennis’ decision not to record the complaints against Chief Constable Dave Jones can be read here.
The discovery that the two officers principally responsible for dealing with complaints for the force and the PCC’s office appear to be entirely unsuited to their respective roles might come as a shock to some. It shouldn’t to Julia Mulligan, as I’ve made my views publicly known to her via social media, and by way of two detailed letters.
My viewpoint is grounded in a number of other outcomes that not only disclose a prejudicial, discriminatory and harassing approach towards me at all times but, more alarmingly, show clearly that DI Fincham, in particular, doesn’t seemingly have much of a clue about what he is doing in the Professional Standards Department (PSD). Neither, it seems does T/Superintendent Maria Taylor who heads up NYP PSD – and appears to be out of her depth.
Or, alternatively, Fincham does – but is prepared to operate outside of regulations and guidelines to advance his career. A classic case in point was a serious complaint made against NYP’s Chief Financial Officer, Jane Palmer, that DI Fincham commandeered and then tried to dismiss as a local resolution matter, along with a half-hearted apology to me. The IPCC have now agreed with me that his actions were wholly inappropriate.
The latest attempt by Mr Dennis to dodge the recording of fully particularised, well evidenced complaints against NYP’s acting Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer, includes the interesting proposition that an officer who is based at police HQ, has a collar number (3840), a NYP email address and, as far as I am able to discern, spends the entirety of her working days on NYP matters, does not fall under Police Regulations or the College of Policing’s Code of Ethics.
Mrs Wintermeyer is captured, in actual fact, by S12 (a) of the Police Reform Act, 2002. A fact of which Mr Dennis should have been aware as he was, himself, NYP Force Solicitor between 2004 and 2012. A period during which a number of scandals emerged concerning senior officers that led to NYP being described by a local MP as a “laughing stock”.
The ‘Mrs Wintermeyer doesn’t work for the police‘ argument was then supplemented with some other starkly threadbare reasoning concerning my reporting of the Operation Hyson fiasco, and other litigation that has not yet commenced. Mr Dennis contended, quite wrongly, that they could possibly be interpreted as grounds not to record and investigate what are very serious complaints.
Most telling of all was that this latest Simon Dennis correspondence was sent minus a URN (complaint reference). Which strongly suggests that this is another case where the decision not to record was made first, followed by a search for whatever reasons can be found to try to justify such a finding.
The fact that Mr Dennis did not disclose in the latest round of correspondence that he has direct oversight of Mrs Wintermeyer’s Force Solicitor role does not assist his own credibility, either.
The ‘vexatious’ argument was, of course, still a last resort option for Mr Dennis if all other reasoning failed. However, the deadline passed on 9th June, 2016 without him making any recording decision on the Wintermeyer complaint. This placed him outside the legislative framework, yet again.
It has also emerged, in correspondence with the IPCC’s lawyers, that Simon Dennis had no delegated power to be dealing with the complaint. Regulation 2 of IPCC (Complaints and Misconduct) (Contractors) Regulations 2015 (Contractor Regulations) requires the chief officer of the police force to do so.
So, yet another non-recording appeal has been submitted to the IPCC, wasting even more time and public money. It is certain to be upheld, much to the growing embarassment of both Mr Dennis and his employer, Julia Mulligan, who has described her Chief Executive’s efforts as ‘appropriate, professional and diligent’ in dealing with the complaints in issue.
Make no mistake: Those are words that will come back to haunt the PCC and her right hand man.
Both Nigel Ward and I have made separate, and well grounded, representations to the IPCC to have DI Fincham, a former Leeds Drug Squad officer, removed from his PSD post. Confidence in the police complaints system cannot be retained whilst he has a role in it.
If the IPCC uphold the appeals against the various outcomes delivered by Mr Dennis – plus the no decision farrago – then it is, also, hard to see how his position can remain tenable. The ‘doesn’t work for NYP’ shenanigans over the Wintermeyer complaints do not assist his prospects of a lengthy tenure, either.
Representations have also been made to the IPCC about the role of Mr Dennis in dealing with complaints. He has already admitted to the police watchdog that he has adopted an Appropriate Authority role in the Wintermeyer complaints for which he has no delegated powers.
Right of reply was offered to both Mr Dennis and DI Fincham when this article was first published on 22nd May, 2016. No comment has been forthcoming from either.
Mrs Mulligan was also approached for comment on 15th June, 2016 concerning her confidence in the ability of both her substantive and acting Chief Executive to operate within the appropriate legislative framework in dealing with complaints. None has been forthcoming, to date.
Page last updated: Friday 17th June, 2016 at 1841hrs
© Neil Wilby 2015-2016. Unauthorised use or reproduction of the material contained in this article, without permission from the author, is strictly prohibited. Extracts from and links to the article (or blog) may be used, provided that credit is given to Neil Wilby, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Photo credits: NYPCC; LinkedIn
Author Neil WilbyPosted on May 22, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags Anthony Ramsden, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Common Purpose, Common Purpose graduates, DI Fincham, Di Steve Fincham, Inn of Last Resort, IPCC, Julia Mulligan, Neil Wilby, Nigel Ward, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, Simon Dennis, Sir Dan Crompton, Stephen Morris QC, Supt Maria Taylor, Vexatious complaints4 Comments on The Inn of Last Resort
Letter to North Yorks Enquirer
The Hillsborough inquests verdict is the biggest story around at present with the conduct of South Yorkshire Police exposed as appalling beyond comprehension.
It has ended the career of my long term adversary, David Crompton, and he deserves every ounce of opprobrium and contempt that will come his way. I hope some of my own articles – such as this one https://neilwilby.com/2016/03/01/david-crompton-the-south-yorkshire-police-years/ – helped him on his way.
I spent a fair amount of time in that airless, featureless converted office block in Warrington that was prepared as a temporary coroner’s court to hear the new inquests. To listen to the same old lies peddled relentlessly by police officers sickened the bereaved families, the survivors of the Disaster, their legal teams and the journalists reporting from court. We will never know in detail what the jury thought of this repulsive conduct, but the verdicts they delivered spoke volumes.
There is a link here to the good people of North Yorkshire because their Chief Constable, Dave Jones, is facing mounting criticism about how he runs his own police force. A contemporary of David Crompton at Greater Manchester Police where they were both chief superintendents, at the same time in the early years of this century, gives a clue as to what might follow for CC Jones.
North Yorkshire Police has been under scrutiny by me for over a year now and what I have found has shocked me profoundly: Since the launch of the uPSD website (www.upsd.co.uk) I had laboured under the belief that their big city neighbours, West Yorkshire Police had more integrity issues than the other two Yorkshire forces put together. Now that view is subject to revision.
A propensity by a police force such as North Yorkshire to break the law, calculatingly and relentlessly, in areas that are easily visible to the enquiring mind of investigative journalist does not bode well for those matters that require a little more digging out. NYP simply do not regard themselves as bound in any way by the Freedom of Information Act; the Data Protection Act; the Police Reform Act; IPCC Statutory Guidance; Code of Ethics or Police (Conduct) Regulations. The police flout them with impunity and – seemingly – with the tacit approval of those at the top of the management pyramid.
There is also this worrying culture of poor communication. Ask a difficult question and you are almost guaranteed not to get an answer. Or, if you do eventually get an answer there is a fair chance it will be untrue. This does not sit easily with the Chief Constable’s script on his force being ‘open and transparent’.
Equally worrying is the attitude of NYP towards its critics, which is a hair trigger response that involves denigrating and smearing – and in extreme cases spending huge sums of public money trying to silence journalists via the courts.
The North Yorkshire Police habit of senior officers helping themselves to public funds has also resurfaced under the regime of CC Jones. He and two other senior officers – DCC Tim Madgwick and C/Supt Lisa Winward – are the beneficiaries of approaching £100,000 of free legal fees to fund a private civil court claim. This is a scandal that goes beyond the financial transgressions of the infamous former NYP chief officers, Grahame Maxwell and Adam Briggs.
It was Lord Maginnis of Drumglass who uttered these words in Parliament in 2011 about North Yorkshire Police: ‘That particularly dubious constabulary that merits careful investigation’
I have taken the Noble Lord’s words to heart.
Author Neil WilbyPosted on April 29, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks PoliceTags C/Supt Lisa Winward, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Dave Jones, David Crompton, DCC Tim Madgwick, Lisa Winward, Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, Neil Wilby, North Yorkshire Enquirer, That particularly dubious constabulary that merits careful investigation, Tim Madgwick, uPSD, uPSD websiteLeave a comment on Letter to North Yorks Enquirer
409,970 reasons not to trust North Yorkshire Police
The old-fashioned notion that honesty was an integral part of policing in the UK has been comprehensively swept away over the past few years, as corruption scandal after corruption scandal has emerged into the public domain.
Many of the worst public outrages concern police forces in Yorkshire. The Hillsborough Disaster, the Battle of Orgreave and Rotherham Abuse failings will forever stain those who wear the South Yorkshire Police uniform.
Their neighbours in West Yorkshire (WYP) have an unenviable record of ‘fitting-up’ innocent people for serious crimes they didn’t commit and this stretches back for decades to Stefan Kiszko and Judith Ward. Investigative and prosecutorial misconduct come easily to this force and one of the worst case ever to come before the courts was also down to them. Never before – or since – has a police force been so roundly and completely condemned by law lords as they were in the Karl Chapman supergrass case. Probably better known now as Operation Douglas.
Most recently, the confirmation that the jailing of one of their own most promising young constables, PC Danny Major, was corruptly grounded, takes WYP to depths in policing criminality rarely plumbed before.
The discredited West Yorkshire Police also share with North Yorkshire Police (NYP) the unenviable distinction of allowing the country’s most notorious child sex offender, Jimmy Savile, to go unchecked for almost 50 years on his home patches of Leeds and Scarborough.
North Yorkshire Police were, of course, out on their own in allowing another notorious and prolific paedophile, Peter Jaconelli to offend at will for a similar period.
Worse still, NYP tried very hard indeed, by way of two bogus investigations into themselves, to rubbish any claims that they knew about the nefarious activities of either of these hideous individuals. Indeed, but for the intervention of two citizen journalists, writing for a North Yorkshire internet news magazine, the police would have got clean away with hoodwinking the public over both Savile and Jaconelli.
This report by ACC Sue Cross (a former West Yorkshire Police officer and pictured below) took just nine days – and zero interviews – to dismiss over forty years of relentless sex offending by a man widely known as “Mr Scarborough”. It’s tone and content is directed much more to discrediting the two journalists than addressing the core issues. A trait much favoured by senior officers in the police service.
North Yorkshire Police were subsequently, and quite rightly, exposed as an incompetent, embarrassing and humiliated shambles. It seems more than a coincidence, therefore, that those same two journalists – Tim Hicks and Nigel Ward – have for the past fifteen months been facing civil court action both mounted and funded by the police (or more accurately the precept payer). This is the article by Mr Hicks that effectively dismantled the now discredited Cross Report.
I have investigated this matter of the claim concerning alleged harassment by the two journalists, extensively, since the issue of the court papers in January 2015 and have written a number of articles as a result:
Cost of silencing police force critics now approaches £1 million (click here)
Complete capitulation follows Fall of Rome (click here)
Key witness in police funded civil action is a proven liar (click here).
The North Yorkshire Police dilemma: Find a murderer or pursue journalists over harassment (click here)
This latest article focuses on just one single aspect of those investigations, upon which a large amount of time and money has already been spent:
North Yorkshire Police and the Police Commissioner, Julia Mulligan, have both quoted a figure of £409,970.90 as the alleged cost of a criminal investigation into the two journalists, and one other. The police investigation was styled Operation Rome and this is the published breakdown of their estimate:
Police officer time from December 2011 to September 2014; 94.6 months – £386,347
Legal services work from October 2010 to June 2014; 243.1 hours – £7,424.73
Civil disclosure work from September 2011 to October 2014; 352 hours – £5,181.44
Related complaints matters; 82 hours – £1,708.88
Chief Officer time; 259.08 – £9,308.85
TOTAL £409,970.90
This costing of what is, at best, a notional spend was the cornerstone that underpinned the decision by the Chief Constable and the Police Commissioner to go ahead and disburse an estimated £202,000 of the public’s money in legal fees, pursuing the civil harassment claim via the senior partner of one of the most expensive law firms in Leeds, and two barristers. One of whom is a well-known QC, with charge rates to match.
Indeed, Mrs Mulligan is quoted as saying: “Dealing with the actions of those involved in the civil case has tied up police resources to a significant extent, and it seemed reasonable to expect that further time and expense would be incurred if no action were taken“.
In layman’s terms, the PCC’s muddled hypothesis appears to be: (i) We have come up with some notional, and fanciful, figures to say it has ‘cost’ North Yorkshire Police £409,970 trying to silence these people, by criminalising them via an embarrassingly bad investigation. (ii) Now, we can save a bit of face by actually spending £202,000 of hard cash, and chase the same three men through the civil courts at the public’s expense. But, with no certainty of achieving anything more than the original failed police investigation (iii) It has actually cost a lot more than £202,000 so far, but we are keeping the lid tightly screwed down on that.
My investigations go a long way to proving that reliance on that particular foundation of the £409,970 calculation will bring the whole Operation Rome edifice to the ground:
The inclusion in the calculations of 94.6 months of police officer time, allegedly costing £386,347, to pursue three members of the public on a harassment without violence investigation stretches the bounds of credibility, far beyond breaking point.
That is the type of sum you would normally expect to see spent on a murder investigation where the perpetrator(s) remain undetected after six months.
Compare Operation Rome’s “£409,970” harassment enquiry, for example, with the recently wound up Operation Essence, a major crimes review of the Claudia Lawrence disappearance and murder. As many as 20 detectives and police staff worked full time for two and a half years. Cost: £800,000 Source: NYP.
Even 94.6 hours would be well beyond the routine for a harassment investigation of this type. That would bring the ‘cost’ in at a more realistic £2,240.34.
A harassment investigation would normally involve a neighbourhood police constable overseen by a sergeant, or possibly an inspector. The police hear what the complainant(s) have to say, speak to the suspects and make a charging decision based on the evidence. There is no forensic science involved, or complex issues to unravel. Even Heartbeat‘s PC Geoff Younger (pictured below) would shine in such probes.
The police have declined to say how many detectives were actually involved. They rely on a total of 14 people including lawyers, civil disclosure officers, PSD officers and staff from the PCC’s office as their answer.
The link between the cost of dealing with complaints against the police, freedom of information requests, reported at £6890.32, and a harassment investigation would also appear very tenuous at best. The complaints against NYP officers and information requests either had merit, or not. No evidence has been produced to me to suggest they were outside the scope of the legislation under which such issues could, quite properly, be raised.
The other ‘big ticket’ items on the costs estimate for Operation Rome also have the fishy odour of red herring. £16,733.58 is the combined total allegedly spent on Chief Officer time and the cost of Legal Services support. It begs the question as to what Chief Officers (who are most unhelpfully not identified by either name or job title) were actually doing that was connected to a criminal harassment investigation and involved 259.08hrs of their time?
The same comment applies to lawyers who are employed by the police force to deal with civil claims, not criminal investigations. How did they manage to spend 243.1 hours on a criminal harassment probe and what were they actually doing?
The bottom line here is that the TOTAL of £409,970 has very much the appearance of a figment of the imagination – and appears to be a figure largely plucked out of the air to justify raiding the public purse so that senior officers, including the Chief Constable and his Deputy could get their hands on free legal fees.
The next step in the process is to look at how the Operation Rome investigation was conducted and what it actually achieved:
None of the three suspects have ever been issued with a Police Improvement Notice (PIN), more commonly known as a harassment warning. More on PIN’s here.
Only one of three suspects, Mr Hicks, was interviewed by the police. The focus of that 2012 interview was alleged damage to the reputation of North Yorkshire Police by his work as a citizen journalist, rather than harassment.
No disclosure was made to Mr Hicks, or his solicitor who was present throughout, that would persuade an independent reviewer that the police claims of harassment were credible.
The letter from Mr Hicks’ solicitor to NYP following the interview can be read here. It amounts to another humiliation of those police officers involved in Operation Rome.
Mr Ward, meanwhile, was completely unaware that any such investigation was in progress that involved him. He was never contacted by either a police officer, or any alleged ‘victim’, at any time concerning harassment allegations.
There was no mention of Mr Ward in the interview conducted with Mr Hicks at Fulford Road police station.
Meanwhile North Yorkshire Police actively canvassed other public officials from parish, borough and county councils, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, to make complaints against the two citizen journalists.
One of the public officials, York City Council social worker, Mark Bednarski, was found to have misled police in his own witness statement by withholding information that damaged his claim.
Another public official, County and Borough Councillor Jane Kenyon lied in her CJA statement. A fact she has recently admitted after being cornered by documentary evidence.
No arrest was made at any time during Operation Rome.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) twice refused to authorised the arrest and charging of Mr Hicks under Section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
The CPS guidance on issue of harassment warnings can be read here.
Following the second refusal by the CPS a ‘leading specialist barrister’, believed to be Simon Myerson QC, was consulted in an effort to make criminal charges stick. That was also a failure.
With Bednarski and Kenyon as star witnesses there would be little prospect of a prosecution succeeding, in any event.
At the end of a near three year investigation, Operation Rome was closed down as an incompetent, embarrassing and humiliating shambles.
But there are a number of questions, asked via appropriate legal channels, that remain unanswered by North Yorkshire Police which cast further and serious doubt on the provenance of the information already supplied about the harassment investigation and its ‘cost’.
NYP have stated in response to a FoIA request that none of the elements of the £409,970 costings are broken down for the years 2011,2012, 2013 and 2014
On the same request, the force cannot provide details of the incident that triggered the Operation Rome investigation. That suggests there is no policy log (sometimes called the policy book) in existence. The first sign of a poorly led, and badly directed, investigation
It is further claimed by NYP that Operation Rome was led by an inspector. Yet, I have in my files letters written by CI Heather Pearson (to Tim Hicks) and DCC Tim Madgwick (to Jane Kenyon) concerning this investigation.
Why was the Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer, who essentially concerns herself with legal disputes in the civil courts tasked with collecting financial estimates for a three-year criminal investigation?
Why is there no written request to Mrs Wintermeyer to carry out this work – upon which so much rested – in existence? The costing exercise was, allegedly, instigated following a verbal request from PCC Julia Mulligan and Chief Constable Dave Jones. Who both, separately, employ a highly qualified, and commensurately paid, Chief Financial Officer (Mike Porter and Jane Palmer respectively).
How could a back of the envelope exercise, delivered in such sloppy form, take over three months to produce?
Why did NYP reply to a FoIA request on 1st December, 2014 (almost at the centre point of the Wintermeyer cost collection exercise according to information she supplied to me by letter) saying that they could neither ‘confirm nor deny’ that such information existed?
Why are NYP dragging their feet on a FoIA request asking them to justify the breakdown of hourly rates used in the calculations?
More crucially, and in the interests of openness and transparency much touted by Mrs Mulligan, why does the Chief Constable, and the PCC, not simply publish the workings of Mrs Wintermeyer with the names of anyone lower than the managerial rank of inspector (or its civilian equivalent) redacted?
This all has the look of a third incompetent, embarrassing and humiliating shambles for North Yorkshire Police. Yet the mindset of its Chief Constable, and his lap dog Police Commissioner, is to dig both him, her and themselves ever deeper into a hole. Rather than confront the fact that they have been caught with their fingers in the till, so to speak, and deal with it in an honest, ethical and professional manner
More importantly, for a police force and a police commissioner to be prepared to relentlessly break the law to try, in vain, to cover its tracks over some distinctly shady territory mean that questions need to be urgently asked, at the Home Office: How can Dave Jones and Julia Mulligan justify conducting police operations in this manner – and for whose benefit are these ‘investigations’ actually being run?
There are, currently, at least 409,970 reasons for the Secretary of State, or the Home Affairs Select Committee, to seek answers to these questions.
Both Chief Constable Jones and Mrs Mulligan have been approached for comment on this article. None has yet been forthcoming from Jones, but a spokesman for the Commissioner said: ‘It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing legal matter‘.
North Yorkshire Enquirer‘s Nigel Ward said this: “At the material time, I was passing North Yorkshire Police a large volume of information regarding SAVILE and JACONELLI and was profusely thanked, by detectives, for my contributions. But during that same period, it seems, the police were plotting (unsuccessfully) to nail me on criminal harassment allegations made by Jane Kenyon. I refute those accusations made by her, entirely“.
But the last words should belong to Lord Maginnis of Drumglass who most presciently commented in Parliament, about North Yorkshire Police, in 2012:
“That particularly dubious Constabulary merits careful investigation”.
Page last updated Tuesday 10th May, 2016 at 1205hrs
Photo credits: North Yorkshire Enquirer, Yorkshire Television, Darlington and Stockton Times and Office of Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire
Author Neil WilbyPosted on March 20, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags ACC Sue Cross, “That particularly dubious Constabulary that merits careful consideration”, Battle of Orgreave, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Danny Major, DCC Tim Madgwick, Heather Pearson, Heather Pearson North Yorkshire Police, Hillsborough Disaster, Jane Kenyon, Jane Palmer, Jane Palmer North Yorkshire Polce, Jane Wintermeyer, Jimmy Savile, Judith Ward, Julia Mulligan, Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, Mike Porter, Mike Porter NYOPCC, Nigel Ward, Operation Essence, Operation Hibiscus, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, PC Danny Major, Peter Jaconelli, Rotherham Abuse failings, Simon Myerson QC, Stefan Kiszko, Sue Cross, T/DCC Sue Cross, Tim Hicks, Tim Madgwick6 Comments on 409,970 reasons not to trust North Yorkshire Police
The Code of Ethics Confidence Trick
The College of Policing‘s Code of Ethics has often been described via my Twitter feed (@Neil_Wilby) as an Emperor’s New Clothes fairy tale, straight from the Hans Christian Andersen portfolio.
It is a joke, a confidence trick, a scam or any other similar name you would like to call it.
The only function for the ethics code, that I can realistically identify, is as a counter-offensive to the constant battering given to the reputation of policing in the relatively new internet age of social media and weblogs. Major corruption scandals have followed one after another over the past four years and, whatever the surveys might show, confidence and trust in the police has never been lower. Most people expect things to go wrong after contact with the police, in one form or another.
Whatever bright face they may wish to put on the posters, this reputational damage has rocked the police service to its core. It has also led to the total discrediting of the police complaints system – and action to rescue a sinking ship was urgently needed. This is where the Code of Ethics plugs the leak, according to the College of Policing. But it is nothing more than a convenient re-painting of the same old hulking wreck.
Chief Constables and their Heads of Communications can no longer rely on cosy, or in some cases coercive, relationships with local and regional editors to ensure the media stay ‘on message’. The police misconduct cat is now, more often than not, well and truly out of the bag, and up on the internet, long before it hits the columns of the local newspaper and their cumbersome, advertisement-riddled websites.
I base my views in this article on extensive scrutiny of the four police forces within my immediate locality. They are Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. As a justice campaigner, investigative journalist and complaint advocate I have almost daily contact with all four.
Whilst not, on weight of evidence, the worst offenders, this article focuses on the Code of Ethics failings of the smallest, and only county force, in that grouping: North Yorkshire Police (NYP).
A key part of the Ethics problem at NYP rests fairly and squarely with the Chief Constable, Dave Jones. He is old school, with a large city force background and, like many of his era and chief officer rank, deeply resents any form of scrutiny and, essentially, regards himself above any law, regulation or code. His force’s hapless, hopeless Professional Standards and Civil Disclosure departments serve only to amplify that point.
Chief Constable Jones also happens to run a police force that has a history of failure hanging over it like a black cloud, at almost every level. Operation Essence is the most recent, visible and high level example of that, where the murderer(s) of Claudia Lawrence still remain undetected after seven years. Alienating the locals who knew Claudia best – not to mention her family – was always going to present difficulties for NYP, and so it has proved. The police are derided and mistrusted in the Heworth area of York. The chances of obtaining crucial information from that vital source is, correspondingly, diminished.
Under that same dark sky are the Jimmy Savile and Peter Jaconelli scandals that were only brought into the light by the assiduous, and relentless, work of two citizen journalists. Before the exposure by Nigel Ward and Tim Hicks – together with a BBC Inside Out programme that exclusively featured their investigation – NYP’s position was that neither of these prolific child sex abusers were known to them and two whitewash probes had been produced by the force to, specifically, underscore that position. It was a shameful passage in the history of North Yorkshire Police.
Down at the basement level things are no better in this badly run, shambolic police force. The 101 contact centre service operated by NYP is, on any independent view, deplorable. Tens of thousands of calls to the force are abandoned each year. Yet it has taken several years of relentless criticism for the force to actually begin to rectify the problem.
Again, like others of his ilk, Jones relies heavily on his press and public relations team to cover those failings. I can think of no other force, even outside of the four with whom I am most closely involved, that indulges itself with as much gratuitous self-congratulation. Anyone with two hours to spare once a month to watch the podcast of the so-called NYP Scrutiny Board will see the living proof of that (click here).
Much of my recent involvement with NYP has concerned two of their investigations which are codenamed Operation Rome and Operation Hyson. Rome was another of the force’s costly, spectacular and well-publicised failures and, it seems, Hyson may yet go the same way.
During my own probe into the workings of Rome and Hyson it has already been necessary to make three Code of Ethics complaints. The first, in December 2015, was against the Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer, following interaction connected to a contemplated judicial review application. The full complaint can be viewed here and it alleges amongst other failings that she was discourteous, disrespectful and derelict in her duties. The complaint also sets out the harassing aspect of her conduct throughout our dealings.
The filing of the Wintermeyer complaint was followed by another NYP farce. It was not recorded by Professional Standards and an appeal was made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). They upheld the non-recording appeal, but by that time NYP were claiming that the complaint had been recorded, after all. The evidence very much suggests otherwise. A trivial point but one that illustrates the troubling lack of candour that taints almost every communication with NYP.
The Wintermeyer complaint is presently the subject of a second appeal to the IPCC (read in full here). Amongst other serious matters, it leaves the police with a stark choice: They either admit to breach of my Article 8 convention rights by interfering with emails and letters sent via Royal Mail, or have their own Force Solicitor marked as dishonest about her claim that she didn’t receive them. It is, also, almost certain that the way the complaint was dealt with by Joanna Carter, the Chief Executive of the Police Commissioner’s office, will lead to a breach of ethics complaint being filed against her once the investigation into her colleague is complete.
A second complaint was filed on 9th March, 2016 against another very senior NYP officer, Jane Palmer. She is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accountant for the police force. A full copy of the complaint can be read here. The allegations are similar to those made against Ms Wintermeyer and a clear pattern begins to emerge as to how NYP view their responsibilities under the Code of Ethics. The particulars of the complaint also set out the rationale for a concerted attempt to subvert process by the two most senior civilian officers in the force, encouraged by none other than the Chief Constable. The latter has a clear personal interest in the concealing of information by Ms Palmer as he is the recipient of taxpayer funded legal fees of around £30,000 and rising from Operation Hyson.
The complaint against Ms Palmer was acknowledged on the same day by the IPCC and forwarded to the Professional Standards Department of NYP. A ludicrous determination of the complaint by T/DCI Steve Fincham, via an entirely inappropriate local resolution process, is now the subject of a further appeal to the IPCC.
A third Code of Ethics complaint has now been lodged against the Chief Constable himself. It also enjoins the Deputy Chief Constable, Tim Madgwick and Chief Superintendent, Lisa Winward. The allegations include breaches of honesty and integrity, and discreditable conduct and the full text of the complaint can be read here.
This complaint against Jones was submitted to the PCC for North Yorkshire, Julia Mulligan, who is the Appropriate Authority for complaints of this nature on Tuesday 12th April, 2016. Those against Madgwick and Winward fall to be determined by the force’s Professional Standards Department.
This is a policing story with some way to run, yet. In the meantime, if you spot a police officer in North Yorkshire ask him (or her) if he (or she) (i) has ever heard of the Code of Ethics (ii) he/she understands what it required of him (or her) under the Code (iii) the disciplinary consequences of being found in breach of the Code?
Page last updated Thursday 14th April, 2016 at 2040hrs
Photo credits: College of Policing and Office of Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire
Author Neil WilbyPosted on March 9, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags BBC Inside Out, C/Supt Lisa Winward, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Code of Ethics, Code of Ethics College of Policing, DCC Tim Madgwick, Di Steve Fincham, Jane Palmer, Jane Palmer North Yorkshire Police, Jane Wintermeyer, Jane Wintermeyer Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer North Yorks Police, Joanna Carter, Joanna Carter North Yorkshire Police, Julia Mulligan, Lisa Winward, Nigel Ward, Operation Essence, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, PCC Julia Mulligan, Steve Fincham, T/DCI Steve Fincham, Tim Hicks, Tim Madgwick2 Comments on The Code of Ethics Confidence Trick
Key witness in police funded civil action is a proven liar
In a sensational and very recent development it can now be proved that the central witness in North Yorkshire Police‘s High Court pursuit of two journalists over harassment claims is a liar.
And not just a little white lie, either. There is at least one whopper that could land Jane Kenyon-Miller in a criminal court.
Documents seen by me as part of extensive enquiries into the background of a police investigation, codenamed Operation Hyson, show that she made a false statement in an earlier and directly connected police probe, Operation Rome. Both these operations sought to silence critics of the force who were seeking to expose police corruption.
As Mrs Kenyon-Miller’s statement was made pursuant to Criminal Procedure Rule R27.2, Criminal Justice Act 1967 and under a declaration that states ‘I shall be liable to prosecution if I wilfully state in it anything which I know to be false, or do not believe to be true’, this leaves the police with a serious problem. Do they apply the law without fear or favour, or bow to her influence as former Chair of North Yorkshire Police Authority and friend of the Deputy Chief Constable, Tim Madgwick (pictured above with Jane Kenyon as she was then known).
That particular lie concerns Mrs Kenyon-Miller’s association with troubled American company, Belvedere Computers Inc. She remains listed as the Chief Financial Officer and Agent for Service: A matter of indisputable fact that she has consistently tried to conceal.
In her CJA statement, given to Operation Rome detectives in 2012, she stated that Belvedere was wound up in 1983. The truth is that the company’s two officers left a trail of creditors and unpaid staff behind them when they returned to the UK. The company is still listed as suspended – not wound up – and there are ongoing Federal and State tax liabilities accruing. It was unpaid taxes that led to the suspension of the company by the California Franchise Tax Board (see graphic above).
The Chief Executive Officer of Belvedere Computers Inc is Thomas William Miller, the long-term life partner and recent husband of Jane Kenyon-Miller.
Mrs Kenyon-Miller has also claimed in another statement that she resigned as Secretary from Belvedere in 1980. Below is an image of a microfiche of the last company document ever filed with the California Secretary of State. It shows her still holding two official postions with the computer company.
Belvedere is not the only failed company with which the Kenyon-Millers have been associated. In 2009, Pickering based Dales Timber Ltd crashed owing over £200,000. Bill Miller was sole Director and Jane Kenyon was Company Secretary. A police investigation followed this latest failure, but no charges were brought. The victims of the alleged fraud, which include one of Mr Miller’s sons, remain bitterly disappointed in how the matter was dealt with by the police. I have interviewed Jeremy Miller and his wife, Karen, at length regarding this. I have also spoken to Bill Miller’s ex-wife, Pamela.
Since then, other lines of enquiry have been opened up and two other crucial witnesses have come forward to also give witness statements and provide contemporaneous documents. New light can now be shone onto these failed ventures and the emerging picture is one that does not show the best side of North Yorkshire Police. There appears to have been a sustained cover-up designed to shield Bill Miller and Jane Kenyon from any form of sanction.
The police cannot claim that they haven’t been provided with the necessary clues: A more detailed analysis of the chequered life and business times of Bill Miller, and the former Jane Kenyon, can be absorbed from this outstanding piece of forensic journalism posted on the Real Whitby website as long ago as 2012 (click here).
Returning to the Jane Kenyon-led harassment claims, Operation Hyson is the codename for the civil court action being financed from police funds. It is estimated that the final cost of Hyson may be in excess of £500,000. Mrs Kenyon-Miller’s personal benefit, in free legal fees, would in that case be in excess of £50,000. Her friend, DCC Madgwick is also claiming to have been harassed by journalists and is receiving a similar amount of free legal fees.
It is a well grounded belief that Mrs Kenyon-Miller, a Borough and County Councillor for many years, was the driving force behind Operation Rome. A spectacular and embarrassing failure for North Yorkshire Police which, they say, cost the taxpayer a sum close to £410,000. More than the money spent on the second stage of the murder hunt for the killer of Claudia Lawrence (read more here). Operation Hyson was started immediately after Rome collapsed, seemingly on the same money no object principle.
Given her business background, and chequered family history, it is almost beyond incredible that Jane Kenyon held the legal and financial portfolios at Scarborough Borough Council until recently.
Other official documents that I have seen confirm that Mr Miller is currently the subject of at least one Department of Work and Pensions fraud investigation with a hearing planned within the next few months: A matter about which his wife, Mrs Kenyon-Miller, claims to have no knowledge.
The civil court case is on-going so further comment regarding its merits or likely outcome is not possible at this time.
Comment has been sought from Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan, who has authorised the legal funding of Mrs Kenyon-Miller’s civil harassment claim, and the Chief Constable, David Jones, who is a co-claimant in the civil action and fellow recipient of free legal fees. Both (pictured below) claim to be committed to embedding the Code of Ethics into their police force.
A North Yorkshire Police spokesperson provided this response on behalf of the two police chiefs: “Due to ongoing legal proceedings it is not appropriate for them to make comment at this time”.
A follow-up question has been put to the force that does not impact on the civil court case: ‘Is it the policy of NYP to prosecute offenders who make deliberately false CJA statements in criminal investigations?’
This is their response: ‘It would be inappropriate for North Yorkshire Police to comment’.
A further clarification has been sought on the basis that they did not understand the question. The question regarding CJA statements was then passed to the Chief Constable’s office on 4th March, 2016.
A more detailed background piece I wrote last year on Jane Kenyon-Miller, a person whom I met when I was Managing Director of the Scarborough Evening News, can be found here.
This page last updated: Friday 4th March, 2016 at 2125
Author Neil WilbyPosted on February 29, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags Belvedere Computers Inc, Bill Miller, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Chief Constable David Jones, Dales Timber Ltd, DCC Tim Madgwick, Jane Kenyon, Jane Kenyon; Jane Kenyon-Miller; Bernard Kenyon; John Poulson; Bill Miller; William Miller; Thomas William Miller; Lisa Dixon; North Yorkshire Police Authority; Peter Jaconelli; Jimmy Savile; Eileen B, Julia Mulligan, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, Thomas William Miller, Tim Madgwick3 Comments on Key witness in police funded civil action is a proven liar
The North Yorkshire Police dilemma: Find a murderer or pursue journalists over alleged harassment.
Claudia Lawrence, a chef at York University, was 35 years old when she went missing in 2009. She was spotted on her way to a 6am shift at work but never arrived and hasn’t been seen since.
Her disappearance was treated as murder, six weeks after her disappearance, and it is the view of some that North Yorkshire Police (NYP) bungled the initial investigation, codenamed Operation Cabin and led by Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway. The police also managed to upset the Lawrence family almost from the start. Not least by issuing a photograph of Claudia with the wrong colour hair soon after she went missing but, mostly, by profiling her as a promiscuous woman with ‘a secret life’.
Claudia’s parents, Peter and Joan Lawrence, and her elder sister, Ali Sims, have campaigned persistently and effectively to keep the case in the public eye and to try to achieve some sort of closure into what is an unimaginably traumatic experience for them and the rest of their family.
North Yorkshire Police undertook to review the Claudia Lawrence case in 2013 following the formation of a new Major Crime Unit based in Harrogate. The original Operation Cabin investigation had reportedly cost £750,000 (read more here) and involved thousands of police man hours but produced no arrest and no trace of Claudia, whatsoever.
Since then, detectives led by Detective Superintendent Dai Malyn (pictured below) have carried out a number of high-profile searches as part of what is now known as Operation Essence. Four local suspects are currently on bail as the Crown Prosecution Service consider a file of evidence sent to them in December, 2015. One was arrested in March, 2015 with the other three detained the following month. All were released without charge.
In May, 2015 a freedom of information request made by the York Evening Press revealed that Operation Essence had been costed at £398,415 up to January, 2015 with 20 staff attached to the investigation.
Remarkably, that figure spent on finding the murderer(s) of Claudia Lawrence is LESS than NYP spent on Operation Rome, which was an investigation into one member of the public and two journalists for alleged harassment on the internet, or via email. Rome involved 14 officers from five departments over a 31 month period and cost £409,970 (see breakdown of costs here). Like Operation Cabin, Rome was a failure and didn’t produce a single arrest.
Also, like Cabin, the ill-starred and poorly executed Operation Rome now has a successor investigation: Operation Hyson. The pursuit of the journalists goes on and, this time around, the harassment case is one being pursued through the civil courts, using police money. The final cost of Hyson is likely to, again, be over the published figure for the second phase of the Claudia Lawrence probe.
What follows, therefore, has to be a question to the police about their priorities. Is solving the highly published mystery of the missing chef really not as important to the force as attempting to silence journalists?
Answers on a postcard to either: PCC Julia Mulligan at her Harrogate HQ or the Chief Constable at Newby Wiske police HQ.
Page last updated Monday 29th February 2016 at 1340hrs
Author Neil WilbyPosted on February 28, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags Ali Sims, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Chief Constable David Jones, Claudia Lawrence, Dai Malyn, Detective Superintendent Dai Malyn, Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway, Joan Lawrence, Julia Mulligan, Major Crime Unit Harrogate, Operation Cabin, Operation Essence, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, Peter Lawrence, Ray Galloway3 Comments on The North Yorkshire Police dilemma: Find a murderer or pursue journalists over alleged harassment.
‘Complete capitulation’ follows the fall of Rome
The decision of the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Julia Mulligan, to use a blank cheque drawn on policing funds to finance a civil harassment claim is one that has already attracted a good deal of controversy. With more certain to follow as the case unravels.
Efforts at unpicking both the history and the rationale behind this extraordinary and unprecedented decision have so far met with obfuscation, obstruction and downright lies from the police and the PCC’s office. Paint in a gratuitous smear, or two, and the picture is complete of a police force and an elected policing representative deeply resenting any form of scrutiny.
This report draws on information from a variety of sources. Most of it routine for an investigative journalist – published articles, freedom of information requests, Google searches, trawls of court and public records, telephone or face-to-face interviews with those involved who are willing, or able, to talk.
But this particular probe has also ventured into the less usual: clandestine meetings with informants, unannounced telephone calls from ‘no caller ID’ numbers, correspondence with a prisoner in jail, materials pushed through the letterbox or sent anonymously via post.
It is also clear, upon their own admission, that emails and letters sent to police HQ and the PCC’s office in connection with a legal challenge to the funding have either been interfered with, or disappeared. An extraordinary situation by any measure and one which the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) were asked to examine. Unsurprisingly, the IPCC completely avoided any mention the issue in a recent appeal assessment that ranks as one of the worst I have ever seen.
The pleadings in the civil court dispute, the merits of the case, or the people involved in it, form only a peripheral part of this report. It is the funding decision, and the actions leading up to it, that is the core subject of scrutiny. The formal Decision Notice was published by Mrs Mulligan on 29th September, 2015, almost twelve months after one of her employees authorised expenditure of a huge amount of taxpayer cash on a private legal matter – and exactly four months after the absence of the notice was drawn to the attention of her staff.
Indeed, it would not have been published at all were it not for considerable pressure exerted on social media (see example below); or by way of a formal complaint to the Police Scrutiny Panel in July 2015 concerning the absence of the notice from her website and via email communications between the Chief Constable’s Finance Officer, Jane Palmer, and myself in August 2015 regarding inspection of the police force’s annual accounts.
The complaint raised against Julia Mulligan also particularised, amongst a number of other issues, concerns about the PCC not holding her chief constable to account over serial failings in the disposal of freedom of information requests (read more here). Despite the Scrutiny Panel, incredibly, not upholding the complaints concerning either the missing Decision Notice or the FoI failings, it has become clear that nine information requests made prior to October 2015 concerning the harassment claims are still unfulfilled. This nugget came from the North Yorkshire Police’s own Civil Disclosure Unit in an outcome dated 8th January, 2016 to Ms Angela Snodgrove, via the What Do They Know website (see NYP outcome here), and gives a clear indicator of the police mindset in seeking to conceal the truth over this financial farrago. A check on NYP’s FoI disclosure log suggests that they are all still unfulfilled.
The police investigation that led to the issuing of the civil harassment claim is styled Operation Hyson. It has been established that Hyson began almost as soon as its predecessor, Operation Rome, ended on 17th July, 2014. Rome was a criminal investigation which focused on two of the three defendants in the civil claim. Opened at the end of 2011, it was a complete, embarassing, and very costly failure for the force. It cannot be judged any other way when detectives spend 31 months attempting to prosecute three people for harassment, without even issuing a singe Police Improvement Notice (PIN) and interviewing only one of the three ‘suspects’?
The fall of Rome was also a major blow to former Police Authority Chair, Jane Kenyon, who was a prime mover behind Operation Rome and reportedly livid when the Crown Prosecution Service refused, on two separate occasions, to prosecute the ‘suspects’ of allegedly harassing her.
Miss Kenyon is also a central figure in the civil claim and, of course, a long term political ally of the Police Commissioner who is funding the legal fees.
A clue to the timings is found on an invoice from barrister Simon Myerson QC in which he refers to both Rome and Hyson (named after a Chinese green tea called Lucky Dragon). The first Hyson conference appears to be a near five hour marathon at Newby Wiske police HQ on 6th August, 2014 which plainly featured Mr Myerson. This meeting took place just over two weeks after Deputy Chief Constable Tim Madgwick had written to the alleged harassers saying there would be no criminal action taken against them. DCC Madgwick (pictured below) is another pivotal claimant in the civil case who is benefiting from – and presumably voted for – a huge amount of public funds to finance his private legal claim over his hurt feelings. He is also a friend of Miss Kenyon and corresponds with her in familiar terms.
From documents disclosed to me it is also clear that following the initial Hyson meeting Mr Myerson’s junior barrister, Hannah Lynch, spent every day for two weeks at police HQ in Northallerton, beginning 11th August, 2014, in conference about the newly instigated investigation. Whilst it is not known who else was present at these daily conferences we do learn from Miss Lynch’s invoices to NYP that Operation Hyson was the subject matter.
It was abundantly clear that, from its outset, Hyson was a major financial undertaking for the police force. It is also reasonable to infer that the police decision to proceed with the civil harassment claim – and fund it – had been taken at the 6th August meeting between the police and Mr Myerson. If not, before.
On October 3rd, 2014 it is claimed that the PCC and the Chief Constable say that they verbally tasked the Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer, with collecting what are described as ‘manual estimates’ from five different departments that had allegedly incurred costs in pursuing Operation Rome. Four days later, the senior partner of Leeds solicitors Ford and Warren, Nick Collins, began billing North Yorkshire Police.
Another recent freedom of information request has revealed that Mrs Wintermeyer was Mr Myerson’s instructing solicitor prior to 7th October. Enquiries have also revealed that no lawyers ‘beauty parade’ took place before the awarding of a very substantial legal engagement to Mr Collins’ firm. NYP tell me that a process called a Single Access Tender (SAT) was invoked after Mr Myerson recommended Ford and Warren as his preferred instructing solicitor. Further details of that SAT, and the supporting documents behind it, have now been requested from NYP. The chronology put forward previously, concerning the events surrounding these legal arrangements, give rise to the strong suspicion that those documents may not exist.
An estimate of £202,000 was given to the police for the cost of the legal action fronted by Ford and Warren. This would, of course, also include the services of counsel, Mr Myerson and Miss Lynch, but exclude Value Added Tax (VAT), the treatment of which may yet become a controversial issue for the force if it has been reclaimed by them as input tax.
By 8th October, 2014 Miss Lynch had clearly started billing for preparation work on the civil harassment claim and another conference – the twelfth in just two months – took place at police HQ, involving her, two days later.
According to Mrs Wintermeyer, yet another conference took place soon after – on October 15th, 2014 – at which the PCC’s Chief Financial Officer, Michael Porter, was asked to ‘authorise expenditure that would allow proactive legal action in respect of the alleged harassment of persons including NYP officers and staff‘. Mr Porter splits his role under Mrs Mulligan with similar duties for the Cleveland PCC. Mr Myerson was also present at this meeting.
The ‘manual estimates’ for the Operation Rome costings were delivered on 12th January, 2015. The total put forward by Mrs Wintermeyer was £409,970.90 (the breakdown of her costings can be viewed here).
Fourteen officers had, allegedly, been involved in the Rome investigation and whilst the legitimacy of some of the number of hours, days and months actually dealing with harassment – as opposed to other viable complaints, correspondence or criminal enquiries – need to be clarified, the hourly rates used in the calculations appear highly questionable. To the extent that NYP have been tasked via another Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request to provide substance to their figures. For example, the rate for an hour of a chief officer’s time is £35.93 whilst detectives investigating harassment (presumably at detective constable and sergeant rank) are rated at £23.24. Common sense suggests that both cannot be correct.
North Yorkshire Police have broken the law (yet again) in failing to determine that FoIA request within the statutory 20 working day period.
It would also strike the independent observer as odd that ‘back of the envelope’ cost calculations should take over three months to collect and collate, by the Force Solicitor, when both Mrs Mulligan, and the Chief Constable, each employ a highly remunerated and professionally qualified Chief Financial Officer. Both of whom might, reasonably, be expected to have such details at their fingertips.
Another curiosity is that a FoIA request determined jointly by NYP and the PCC on 1st December, 2014 stated that they could ‘neither confirm nor deny’ that the same financial information being collected by Mrs Wintermeyer actually existed (read FoI decision here).
A more recent FoIA outcome (1oth March 2016) delivered by NYP via the WhatDoTheyKnow website (read in full here) casts even further doubt onto the authenticity of the £410,000 estimate. NYP say that Mrs Wintermeyer’s costings were not even broken down year by year (2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014) which any book-keeper, with an ‘O’ level in mathematics, would deem to be a basic requirement. How can some officers have analysed their time down to the minute and, yet, not know the date they allegedly did the work on Operation Rome? The whole Wintermeyer exercise lacks a ring of truth. A remark that can also be made about a number of her contributions to Operation Hyson. To the extent that she is now the subject of formal Code of Ethics complaint (read more here)
On the same day as Mrs Wintermeyer’s ‘costings’ were delivered to her employers (12th January), she says ‘advice was provided to the PCC regarding the lawfulness of expending money from the police force budget for Operation Hyson’. She doesn’t say from whom, but goes on to say ‘On or about January 13th, 2015 advice was provided from a leading barrister‘. It is not clear upon whose instructions that the ‘leading barrister’ was acting, what those instructions actually were, or the advice given, or to whom, as Mrs Wintermeyer is claiming legal privilege. Curiously, Mr Myerson on his detailed invoice for the day in question makes no mention of providing such opinion.
Following publication of this article, Mrs Wintermeyer has backtracked from her 13th January claim and has now put forward another unlikely proposition: That Mr Myerson gave the Police Commissioner his professional opinion over the vires of the funding of the civil claim in open meeting on 15th October, 2014. Whilst, seemingly, not instructed by solicitors retained by her.
Less than a week after the highly questionable Operation Rome costings and purported legal advice were given to Mrs Mulligan and the Chief Constable, Mrs Wintermeyer says the decision was made to issue civil proceedings against the subjects of the Rome criminal investigation.
But the date given for that decision – on or about 19th January, 2015 – cannot be true, for a number of reasons. It must been taken been taken months earlier. Operation Hyson, as we know from Mr Myerson’s invoices, was underway almost as soon as Rome collapsed in July 2014. Hyson is, to all intents and purposes the collection of evidence for, and the pursuit, of the civil litigation. Another clue is that, according to a very reliable source, three of the claimants’ witness statements were drawn up and signed before 19th January. Another clue from Mr Myerson’s accounts is that he was working on his skeleton argument and a draft order on 13th January.
But the most compelling reason is that the huge amount of materials exhibited with the harassment claim form could not have possibly been assembled, printed, collated, boxed and sent to the court, the nine claimants and three defendants on the following day. It takes a porter’s trolley to wheel them into court. Included in those boxes full of lever arch files is a witness statement from Mrs Wintermeyer that names twelve other individuals as potential claimants in the harassment proceedings, including the Temporary Chief Constable of Cleveland Police, Iain Spittal (pictured below); retired NYP ACC Steve Read and five other NYP officers. Two of them at managerial rank. Four of them still serving and one retired.
That statement also makes clear that approaches had been made by Mrs Wintermeyer to councillors and officers of North Yorkshire County Council, City of York Council, Scarborough Borough Council and Leeming Parish Council, amongst others, to canvass backing for NYP’s harassment claims. This is a process that must have taken weeks and months, not hours.
It is not clear upon whose instructions Mrs Wintermeyer was acting, in what appears to be unethical touting using the temptation of free legal funding, courtesy of the unwitting taxpayer, in the name of North Yorkshire Police. It is unprecedented and scandalous conduct by a police force, or any other public authority for that matter, following extensive searches to find a similar example. For a solicitor (and an officer of the Court) to indulge herself in such practices may also pose regulatory, or court procedural, issues.
Significantly, the number of claimants has seemingly reduced by one, not increased: Retired Superintendent Heather Pearson (pictured below) no longer appears on formal court documents, including the Consent Order agreed on 9th February, 2015. The fact that her witness statement was not signed, or dated, at the time of service may have a bearing on that. Ms Pearson was a senior officer on the failed Rome investigation under DCC Madgwick’s direction. By contrast, none of the twelve named by Mrs Wintermeyer, or the many other and so far unnamed public officials, have come forward to join in the financial free-for-all.
But it was at the end of January 2015 where it all started to go wrong for the police, its PCC and all the others involved in Operation Hyson. Having taken almost six months gathering information for their legal claim, the decision was taken to abandon the Court’s strict requirement for pre-action protocol to be followed. This involves a letter before claim being served on defendants so that they can marshall their own resources and attempt to narrow issues between the parties, before the expense of court costs is incurred. A decision made all the more extraordinary insofar as the principal target of the litigation, Mr Peter Hofschröer, was incarcerated in HMP Wandsworth, having been arrested by NYP in York city centre six weeks earlier.
The court papers show that they were sealed on 20th January and it has been established that process servers were engaged to hand them to the defendants the day after. The cost of that exercise was over £1,000 for delivering two boxes containing fourteen oversized lever arch files to three addresses.
An interim hearing date at Leeds High Court had already been set for 9th February, 2015 by the time proceedings were filed and served. Whether the defendants were available to put their case to the judge, or not.
On the face of it, the action of the police gave every appearance of a legal ambush. It is also a fair assumption that they either did not expect the two journalist defendants, Tim Hicks and Nigel Ward (pictured below), to turn up at court – or they would attend unrepresented and find themselves facing a leading QC and a junior barrister.
In the event, after a hasty scramble, representation was arranged for the journalists via Nottingham law firm, Bhatia Best, and London human rights barrister, Ian Brownhill. It was a smart move as no injunctive relief was granted for the nine claimants and there was no order for costs. The Daily Mirror journalist in court at the time, Mark Lister, described the Consent Order agreed by Mr Brownhill and Mr Myerson as ‘a complete capitulation‘ by the police’s lay claimants.
Mr Brownhill also raised the moot point that, in his opinion, the funding of the civil action by the police was potentially ultra vires or in layman’s terms, in breach of common law. NYP’s legal team had, at first, tried to conceal from the defendants’ lawyers that the police were, in fact, financing the claim. Nowhere, in fourteen lever arch files of pleadings, could a certificate of funding be found. Which hardly suggests that NYP were brimful of confidence that such an arrangement would withstand judicial scrutiny.
Neither did the fact that Julia Mulligan had opted not to inform the North Yorkshire taxpayers about the fact that she had committed well over £200,000 of their money, taking sides in what her solicitor describes, disingenuously, as a ‘family dispute’. No formal Decision Note was published in October 2014 when the agreement to spend this money was allegedly made with the Chief Constable and, as rehearsed in some detail above, the public would not have been informed at all without my intervention. A fact admitted by Mrs Wintermeyer in correspondence between us.
This refusal to publish details of the decision to fund a private legal claim does not sit easily with the PCC’s repeated assertion of ‘openness and transparency’ in her approach to her elected representative role or, indeed, her lawful obligations under the Elected Local Policing Bodies (Specified Information) Order, 2011 at Schedule Part 1 5(d) which states: ‘a record of each decision of significant public interest arising from the exercise of the elected local policing body’s functions, whether made by the body at or as a result of a meeting or otherwise‘
Mrs Mulligan, Mrs Wintermeyer and the PCC’s Chief Executive, Joanna Carter, are all silent over what they knew about Operation Hyson – and they are all also currently claiming it is uncosted as far as NYP internal charges are concerned – from its inception at the beginning of August 2014 until the meeting on 15th October, 2014, where it is said that Mr Porter approved the expenditure of Ford and Warren’s budget estimate of £202,000.
Ms Carter was Treasurer to the defunct North Yorkshire Police Authority (NYPA) from 2005 to its cessation. A very troubled period in which there were repeated scandals over alleged misuse of public funds by senior police officers. Throughout that period Jane Kenyon was, significantly, Chair of NYPA.
Piece by piece, the picture on the front of the Lucky Dragon jigsaw box begins to shape up.
By May 18th, 2015 the legal costs incurred by solicitors and counsel retained by NYP on Operation Hyson had run up to £141,737.94, almost 75% of the budget. On 29th May I first raised my disquiet with Mrs Mulligan, and her staff, about the missing Decision Notice and lack of other information to which taxpayers were entitled. Those legitimate concerns were studiously ignored.
Poor engagement with constituents, and journalists, has been a consistent feature of the PCC’s tenure and she has twice been upbraided by the Police and Crime Scrutiny Panel (PCP) on this issue. On one of those occasions, in December 2013, she was asked by the PCP to apologise to one of the two journalists involved in this action as defendant, Tim Hicks. Mrs Mulligan has steadfastly refused to do so ever since. Not only undermining her own credibility, bringing the complaints system into disrepute but, most crucially, calling into question her own personal motivation for funding the costly harassment action against Mr Hicks, with the public’s cash.
A case management hearing on 26th June, 2015 was the next court outing for the police’s high-powered and hugely expensive legal battalions, which no doubt contributed to the uplift in the lawyers’ bills to £164,602 by the end of September. This was the figure published in the long-overdue Decision Notice which appeared, unheralded, on the PCC’s website on the 29th of that month.
Submissions made by Mr Myerson in his skeleton argument ahead of the June hearing included the false claim that I had been in Leeds High Court on 9th February (rather than in my sick bed at home) and an equally ludicrous assertion that I had ‘harassed’ Chief Constable David Jones and eight other claimants by posting articles and messages on behalf of Messrs Hicks and Ward. This harassment claim was not particularised, which was unsurprising as there are no such harassing articles or messages. Significantly, there has been no contact from either Mr Jones or his police force, since the hearing, that remotely concerns such allegations. It amounted to nothing more than a blatant attempt by North Yorkshire Police to smear.
The Decision Notice makes no attempt to account for the delay in publication, or the unusual circumstances in which Mrs Mulligan was compelled to comply with her lawful obligations. Most crucially, it does not mention that her two most senior officers, the Chief Constable and his Deputy, were to benefit by at least £24,000 each from the arrangement. We are back, it seems to the bad old North Yorkshire Police days of the Della Canning, Grahame Maxwell and Adam Briggs style of management.
The whole matter of the PCC’s Decision Notice has the uncomfortable feel of sleight of hand and historical revisionism, not assisted by Mrs Wintermeyer’s refusal to provide documentary evidence to back up the claims made in the notice. Such as email communications between the PCC and Mr Porter or Joanna Carter between August and October, 2014. Mrs Wintermeyer’s preoccupation with attempting to smear me over a similar civil harassment case, in which I recently succeeded against the IPCC and their three publicly funded lay claimants, did more to undermine her credibility than mine. A link between the two cases is that one of the IPCC’s claimants against me, Senior Oversight Manager Rebecca Reed, was also approached to join in with NYP’s harassment action. This information was taken from the Miss Reed’s own witness evidence in a third money-no-object, publicly funded harassment action which concluded on 18th February, 2016 at Leeds County Court. The defendant refused to participate in the proceedings claiming that his Article 6 convention rights were being breached by the Court.
Less than three weeks after publication of the Decision Notice, on October 16th 2015, Mrs Mulligan was telling a former local councillor at a Whitby Rotary Club lunch that ‘the spending tap has been turned off‘ as far as Hyson and the civil claim was concerned. She was, it seems, either being economical with the truth or was being misled by police’s chief officer team.
Notwithstanding the PCC’s claim, there have been two more court hearings in Leeds since the Decision Notice appeared. On 27th November 2015 and 20th January, 2016. At the first of those hearings judgment was awarded against Mr Hofschröer which leaves the two journalists as the remaining defendants and legal costs spiralling out of control – and very likely well beyond the budget figure of £202,000.
With a trial date now set for 20th July, 2016 legal costs are likely to run over to £400,000 with another large chunk of senior police officer time occupied on top of the financial burden.
The one saving grace as far as the PCC’s legal costs are concerned is that the police QC, Simon Myerson (pictured below), has absented himself from the latest two hearings, although he is still on record at the court as leading barrister for the claimants. When approached on the Twitter social media website as to why a QC was running a county court harassment claim he stated that ‘the law is complex and the point is novel’. That was taken to mean whether the funding decision was vires or ultra vires. When this was put to Mrs Wintermeyer in subsequent correspondence between us she claimed the issue of vires was not at all novel.
Mr Myerson charges the police £300 an hour to give opinions and advocate in their cause. Even when he is travelling in his car, with expenses on top. Yet, he is happy to spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter ‘arguing’ for free, and ‘losing’ on a surprising number of occasions.
Two freedom of information requests concerning sight of the up to date bills from Mr Myerson, his junior colleague, Miss Lynch, and Weightmans have not yet produced a response from NYP. The first of those was made on 8th January, 2016 and the police have, to the surprise of no-one, been prepared for the umpteenth time to break the law rather than comply.
A separate freedom of information request, concerning the independent legal advice received by Mrs Mulligan about the legality of the civil claim funding, also remains unfulfilled. It simply asks for sight of the invoices from the solicitor and barrister who provided the opinion. A similar request was made concerning the ‘opinion’ sought by the PCC’s auditors, Mazars LLP, that enabled them to pronounce, belatedly, that the use of public funds to fund private litigation is lawful. They are also now overdue for disposal.
So much then for Mrs Mulligan’s and the Chief Constable’s approach to openness and transparency. A phrase that is repeated no less than four times in the PCC’s Decision Notice. Doth the lady protest too much?
An update to the PCC’s Decision Notice and a sharp upward revision of the budget for the legal expenditure is eagerly awaited, as is requested comment on this report from the two police chiefs.
A clarification on the position regarding Value Added Tax and P11D benefits in kind for the police employees named in the civil claim, would also be most welcome by the taxpayers of North Yorkshire and beyond.
The cost of silencing journalists via the civil courts doesn’t come cheap, as the IPCC recently discovered, and neither is it guaranteed to succeed.
Page last updated Thursday 19th May, 2016 at 0745hrs
Photo credits: Twitter (@SCynic1), BBC Inside Out, North Yorkshire Enquirer and Office of Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire
Author Neil WilbyPosted on February 14, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags @SCynic1, ACC Steve Read, Adam Briggs, Angela Snodgrove, BBC Inside Out, Bhatia Best, Chief Constable David Jones, DCC Iain Spittal, DCC Tim Madgwick, Della Canning, Grahame Maxwell, Hannah Lynch barrister, Heather Pearson, Heather Pearson North Yorkshire Police, Iain Spittal, Ian Brownhill, Jane Kenyon, Jane Palmer, Jane Palmer North Yorkshire Polce, Jane Wintermeyer, Jean James, Joanna Carter, Joanna Carter North Yorkshire Police, Julia Mulligan, Leeming Parish Council, Lucky Dragon, Lucky Dragon green tea, Mark Lister, Mark Lister Daily Mirror, Mazars LLP, Michael Porter, Michael Porter Cleveland PCC, Michael Porter NYOPCC, Nigel Ward, North Yorkshire Enquirer, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, Peter Hofschröer, Rebecca Reed, Rebecca Reed IPCC, Simon Myerson QC, Steve Read North Yorkshire Police, T/CC Tim Madgwick, Tim Hicks, Tim Madgwick, Twitter: @Neil_Wilby, What Do They Know7 Comments on ‘Complete capitulation’ follows the fall of Rome
Cost of silencing police force critics now approaches £1 million
Tuesday 9th February marked the first anniversary of the initial hearing of a civil harassment claim that is known, curiously, as Hofschröer and others –v- Hofschröer and others. On the face of it, a family dispute gone wrong concerning title to a property formerly owned by a deceased father and an ailing mother.
But behind that domestic façade lies three other matters of significant public interest:
Firstly, this dispute principally concerns the widely publicised ‘Grandma B’ case in which both North Yorkshire Police and York City Council have been criticised heavily over the treatment of disabled World War Two veteran, Barbara Hofschröer. Her son, Peter, has been fighting for justice, on behalf of his mother, since 2008.
Secondly, two citizen journalists who write for the website news magazine, North Yorkshire Enquirer, are also defendants in what appears to be an attempt to silence them from publicising the shortcomings of the police, and other public authorities. The two scribes, Tim Hicks and Nigel Ward are best known for their work exposing scandals involving the late Peter Jaconelli, for many years the face of the seaside town of Scarborough, and the country’s most notorious sex offender, Sir Jimmy Savile.
Thirdly, this civil action has been publicly funded on the authority of Julia Mulligan, the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire (NYPCC). This move, which many believe is unlawful, and a grotesque waste of public money, has allegedly cost taxpayers a sum approaching a million pounds already.
There are nine claimants listed on court papers accessible to the public. They have been identified as three serving police officers and six civilians (one retired police officer, a former Police Authority chair, a former Council social worker and three Hofschröer family members). The direct legal funding this group has received already is believed to be in excess of £300,000 or £33,333 each, give or take small change. The precise figures have been requested from both the police, and the NYPCC, but they have elected to break freedom of information law rather than disclose the latest invoices from their lawyers. An earlier disclosure put the lawyers’ fees at £164,919 up to mid-September, 2015 (Read FoI outcome here).
The three serving police officers involved in the harassment claim are the Chief Constable, Dave Jones; the Deputy Chief Constable, Tim Madgwick and Head of Uniformed Operations, C/Supt Lisa Winward. The retired officer is ex-Supt Heather Pearson and the former NYPA chair is Jane Kenyon-Miller (pictured below alongside Mr Madgwick). A very powerful group indeed, who have allegedly already spent £450,000 internally in trying to stem the flow of criticism against their police force, by pursuing a criminal ‘investigation’ codenamed Operation Rome. The Crown Prosecution Service twice rebuffed approaches by North Yorkshire Police to permit charges to be made against Mr Hofschöer and Mr Hicks. Mr Ward was not, at any time, interviewed or even contacted by police in connection with this matter.
On 20th January 2015 civil court papers were, ostensibly, served on the three defendants without any prior notice. The Court’s own strict rules demand that such a step is taken under what is known as pre-action protocol. Clearly, this requirement was not followed and there is no explanation yet available why the police, the NYPCC and their legal team chose to act in such a way. On any independent view, it had the appearance of an ambush.
By this time, Peter Hofschröer was on remand in HMP Wandsworth having been arrested by North Yorkshire Police detectives outside the magistrates court in York on 4th December, 2014 whilst trying to file papers against other members of his family that he believed would protect the interest of his mother. He claims, quite reasonably, that court papers concerning the civil claim made by the nine defendants – including his brother, sister-in-law and nephew, did not reach him prior to his transfer from Wandsworth to HMP Hull.
In Nigel Ward’s case, the court papers were sent to the wrong address and left on the doorstep outside an empty property for forty-eight hours, accessible to public inspection. North Yorkshire Police, surprisingly, did not refer themselves to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over this calamitous data protection breach, including personal data concerning their own two most senior officers. Mr Ward has, quite correctly, reserved all rights concerning the unlawful disclosure of his own personal data.
At the first hearing in Leeds High Court on 9th February, 2015 the claimants sought an interim injunction against the two journalists – and Mr Hofschröer – that effectively ordered the defendants to take down articles published about the nine claimants, and prevented each of the three defendants from contacting the claimants by phone, email or in person. It was a draconian move, and the police-funded claimants were represented at court by two barristers, Simon Myerson QC and Hannah Lynch. These legal heavyweights were instructed by leading Leeds law firm Ford and Warren (since taken over by Weightmans).
This second phase of the North Yorkshire Police action, codenamed Operation Hyson, was launched following advice given to them by ‘a leading, specialist barrister’, believed to be Mr Myerson (pictured below) after Rome had fallen.
The two journalists were both represented by London human rights barrister, Ian Brownhill, instructed by Nottingham solicitors, Bhatia Best. Recruited at very short notice, the lawyers performed a minor miracle in reading a huge volume of paperwork, and preparing a defence, over the weekend before the first hearing.
The outcome of that court hearing was in two parts: An interim injunction was granted against the absent, and unrepresented, Mr Hofschröer and a consent order was sealed by the judge, His Honour Mark Gosnell, which effectively maintained the status quo between the claimants and the two journalists. It meant, in real terms, that none of the articles complained about, by the claimants, were taken down by any of the defendants, including Mr Hofschröer who has no access to a computer whilst held in jail.
Mr Brownhill had also raised the issue of ultra vires that, in layman’s terms, means there is serious doubt in his mind about the legality of public funding being used, by the police, to finance civil litigants in a harassment claim.
Subsequent hearings over Operation Hyson took place at Leeds Combined Court, before HHJ Gosnell, in June and November, 2015. The matter was transferred from the High Court to the County Court at the first of these hearings, at which directions were given to all parties in preparation for a trial that was scheduled to begin on 7th December, 2015. At the later hearing – which was listed as a pre-trial review – summary judgment was granted in favour of the nine claimants against Mr Hofschröer after he elected not to take part in the proceedings citing breaches of his Article Six convention rights. This left the two journalists as the remaining defendants in the claim. The judge ordered that the December trial date be vacated and a further case management hearing to be listed for 20th January, 2016. HHJ Gosnell also advanced the view to counsel representing both sides that every effort to settle the matter should have been made by that date.
The January hearing, conducted in the judge’s chambers by telephone conference, resulted in no settlement being reached and, as a consequence, a trial window opened by HHJ Gosnell between April and July, 2016 with a time estimate for the final hearing of seven days. This is to allow an additional period for the claimants to file further evidence in support of their claim against the journalists, a year to the day since they issued proceedings. The Court have recently confirmed that the trial is set to open on 20th July, 2016.
A trial of this duration is likely to place a further burden on the taxpayer of around £100,000, given that there is no reasonable prospect, based on recent legal precedent, of the litigation achieving its two-tier objective. A harassment finding for each of the nine claimants against each of the two remaining defendants, is the first hurdle. Only if that threshold is reached could the court consider that an injunction against two journalists was the appropriate remedy.
A press statement concerning the outcome of the January 2016 hearing was requested, from the PCC and the Chief Constable, during a recent Police Scrutiny Board meeting held a few days afterwards, but the opportunity was declined by both police chiefs. The reasons for doing so bear no examination (see Scrutiny Board podcast here).
There are also the substantial internal costs incurred by the North Yorkshire Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer, and her staff, to consider. Marshalling nine claimants and instructing the two Weightmans solicitors dealing with the matter, over a period of fifteen months, would not come cheap. Mrs Wintermeyer also canvassed other high profile public officials, including Rebecca Reed, a senior manager engaged with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), prior to the issue of proceedings in order to add substance to the North Yorkshire Police’s Rome and Hyson investigations.
During the January 2016 case management hearing, the issue of ultra vires and abuse of process was raised again by Mr Brownhill. He was told by HHJ Gosnell that the question of whether this claim falls to be determined as vires or ultra vires, is in his view, an arguable case. But, not one that would be heard before him in the County Court. A separate public law challenge would have to be mounted in the Administrative Court. One of the defendants, Mr Ward has confirmed that this process will soon be in train.
The Police and Crime Commissioner originally claimed to have sought ‘independent legal advice’ on the vires issue on 12th January, 2015 (read her formal statement here) but has, so far, not disclosed the invoices from her solicitor and counsel that would prove that point, following a freedom of information request. Mrs Mulligan was prepared to break the law rather than either disclose the information, or admit it doen’t actually exist. Her latest claim is that the advice was not provided in writing by the ‘leading barrister’ involved in January 2015, but given verbally in a meeting on 15th October, 2014. A meeting at which it is known Mr Myerson was present, by reference to his invoice sent to NYP that covers the day in question.
Mrs Mulligan (pictured above with Chief Constable Jones) undoubtedly faces a difficult few weeks ahead as both the merits of Operations Rome and Hyson, the subsequent civil court trial, and the source of it’s funding, come under intense scrutiny during the forthcoming PCC election campaign.
Since this article was first published on 7th February, 2016 information has been obtained about a referral from the Parliamentary Committee for Public Accounts to the National Audit Office concerning the legality of the decision to spend public money financing private claims (read more here).
The press officers for both North Yorkshire Police and the Police Commissioner have been offered the opportunity to comment but none has been forthcoming, so far.
Page last updated on Sunday 1st May, 2016 at 0945hrs
Photo credits: Twitter (@SCynic1), North Yorkshire Enquirer and Office of Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire
Author Neil WilbyPosted on February 7, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags #NYPScrutiny, Barbara Hofschroer, Bhatia Best, Chief Constable Dave Jones, Chief Superintendent Lisa Winward, Ford and Warren, Hannah Lynch, Heather Pearson, Heather Pearson North Yorkshire Police, HHJ Mark Gosnell, Ian Brownhill, Jane Kenyon, Jane Kenyon NYPA, Jane Kenyon-Mller, Jane Wintermeyer, Jimmy Savile, Julia Mulligan, Lisa Winward, Nigel Ward, Operation Hyson, Operation Rome, Peter Hofschröer, Peter Jaconelli, Police Scrutiny Board, Rebecca Reed, Rebecca Reed IPCC, Simon Myerson QC, Tim Hicks, Tim Madgwick2 Comments on Cost of silencing police force critics now approaches £1 million
Former Police Authority Chair in fresh Alderman storm
To many in the picturesque coastal towns of Scarborough and Whitby, and an even larger number across the broader acres of North Yorkshire, the very thought that Jane Margaret Kenyon could be worthy of a special civic honour would be anathema.
Miss Kenyon endured a chequered history during her political career as a councillor in Scarborough; whilst in her seat on North Yorkshire County Council; and in her role as Chair of North Yorkshire Police Authority (NYPA). She was also a failed Parliamentary candidate, having stood for Huddersfield West as a Conservative nominee in 1991.
As Chair of NYPA, she was in post when the force failed to net the country’s most notorious sex abuser, Jimmy Savile and it is inconceivable that she was one of the very few people in the area who were not aware, however obliquely, of the serial sex offending of Council colleague, and former Mayor of Scarborough, Peter Jaconelli. Indeed, it has been recently revealed that Jaconelli was actually charged with sexually abusing a Spanish waiter during his mayoral year. The case was later mysteriously dropped.
Miss Kenyon was also in the NYPA hot seat during the Grahame Maxwell and Adam Briggs scandals that brought national media attention of the worst kind to North Yorkshire Police.
It was also Jane Kenyon who abused her role as Chair in attempting to have journalist Tim Hicks arrested, on entirely spurious claims of criminal harassment, which resulted in a lengthy post-interview state of hiatus but no arrest, no disclosure of any offence committed, or any further action by the police except a senior detective telling Hicks his articles were ‘damaging the reputation of North Yorkshire Police‘.
It was a spiteful, vindictive act by Miss Kenyon (whom police officers referred to throughout the Hicks interview as ‘Jane’) designed only to intimidate a reporter trying to do his job exposing misconduct in public authorities. What has now belatedly emerged is that Miss Kenyon lied in her witness statement as part of those police enquiries (read more here)
Calls for Miss Kenyon to resign as Chair of the Police Authority stretch as far back as 2005 when, unsurprisingly in the light of what was to follow, financial irregularities were uncovered by auditors in the accounts management of the police. A full York Evening Press report can be read here. It is a a damning indictment of her stewardship at NYPA.
There was a further, widely reported call for Kenyon to resign in 2007: This time the scandal centred on the waste of hundreds of thousands of pounds for 27 luxury cars, for which the senior police officers using them had not received appropriate training. (Scarborough News coverage here ). Another sorry tale of financial mismanagement.
There was, in between times, the Chief Constable Della Cannings profligacy scandal, particularly when the cost of a shower next to her office cost £28,000. Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough at the time, accused her of turning the local police into “a laughing stock”, while the Yorkshire Post revealed further details of Cannings’ extravagant and self-glorifying behaviour, including a HQ sculpture garden and a building to be named in her honour. Not to mention her cock-a-doodle-do telephone ringtone, and the poor-taste joke about her ‘vibrator’. All this, again, on Kenyon’s watch at the Police Authority. The fact that Ms Canningswas a regular vistor to Miss Kenyon’s home between Scarborough and Whitby would, of course, be entirely unconnected. They are both pictured below.
It is also in my own certain knowledge, following a lengthy interchange with Dr Judith Heeley, who was then Treasurer for both West Yorkshire Police Authority (WYPA) and the NYPA, prior to her retirement, that certain cross-Authority ‘deals’ and staffing arrangements were not at all to the advantage of NYPA, yet had been signed off by Kenyon.
Interestingly, shortly after election as Police & Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan ended some, if not all, of those financial arrangements.
As a County and Borough councillor, Kenyon has featured in the national press over a number of scandals, which include the infamous ‘double-dipping’ farrago where elected North Yorkshire representatives were shamelessly drawing allowances for exactly the same item from two different public purses. Her association as Chief Financial Officer with Belvedere Computers Inc in the United States, where a trail of debt and unpaid employees was left in its wake along with the whiff of a ‘long firm fraud’, and the similarly ill-starred Dales Timber Ltd which left creditors nursing £250,000 of debt headaches, do not chime well with Kenyon’s role in charge of oversight of a police force, or her legal and financial portfolio responsibilities as a councillor. Neither do failure to register interests appropriately, as a public official, as required under the Localism Act 2011.
Brought up in Huddersfield, and a graduate of the exclusive, fee-paying Wakefield Girls High School, the charismatic Kenyon holds a special interest to the author of this piece. Not least because her father, Sir Bernard Kenyon, was Clerk of the former West Riding County Council based in Wakefield. He was a formidable figure in the area, but fell from grace through his improper association with the famously corrupt architect, John Poulson. The modernistic palace named ‘Manasseh’ that Poulson built on the edge of his home village, Carleton on the outskirts of Pontefract, was actually directly opposite my first ever home, ‘West Haugh’, after fleeing my parents’ nest.
Jane Kenyon and I actually met at a charity function in the Royal Hotel during my time as managing director of the now defunct Scarborough Evening News. She was charm and grace personified.
Her marriage in January 2014, after a long term adulterous relationship, to another Scarborough councillor noted for financial chicanery, Thomas William Miller, does leave the independent observer with the view that scandal is never far from Jane Kenyon’s door. Or, as she is sometimes now known: Jane Kenyon-Miller. The corporate and financial dealings of Bill Miller (as he is more commonly known), over a very long period, don’t bear too much scrutiny – but it serves no useful purpose to rehearse them here. It is not ‘Nine Dollar Bill’ that is being lined up for an ill-deserved civic honour.
Which brings the reader, neatly, to the thrust of this piece: Jane Kenyon was given the considerable honour of becoming a Honorary Alderman of the Borough of Scarborough at a specially convened meeting on 23rd October, 2015, despite some vigorous objections raised by me, and others more local to the Borough. In the course of my interchange with the Council’s press officer, Gabrielle Jandzio, on this subject, it has become clear that I was deliberately misled by none other than the Council’s Legal Services Manager, Lisa Dixon, and her subordinate, David Kitson, who set out to falsely misrepresent the contents of correspondence concerning a previous complaint made against Mrs Dixon to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
This is the same Lisa Dixon who tried to prevent local journalists Nigel Ward, and the aforementioned Tim Hicks, uncovering a series of embarrassing stories about her and Scarborough Council by threatening to have their website closed down. The website is still functioning normally, today, when I checked. Indeed, this is one of the more interesting pieces I found concerning Jane Kenyon (click here).
The Real Whitby material on Scarborough Council’s frequent misdemeanours is also, as far as I can see, replicated on the more recent North Yorks Enquirer website. There has been no challenge by Mrs Dixon to the content of that website, thus far.
The SRA are now aware that a complaint will be lodged over this issue once my enquiries into the matter are complete and, it has emerged, that there is already a previous complaint against Mrs Dixon on file. Although this was misrecorded by the SRA, as a complaint against Scarborough Borough Council, rather than Mrs Dixon. A matter, presently, the subject of an appeal by the complainant.
Several freedom of information requests were made to the Council concerning the process leading to the nomination of Jane Kenyon for Alderman status. Unsurprisingly, the Council failed to respond within the statutory twenty working day period with the information and it soon become clear that significant tranches of material had been deliberately withheld by Mr Kitson, who signed off the disposal letter. A review of that decision requested in September has failed to draw any response whatsoever and the matter is now with the Information Commissioner’s office for determination. Both regulatory and civil action is contemplated over Kitson’s conduct of these matters: His disposition in flagrantly circumventing the law of the land does not sit well with his status as a solicitor, and more crucially, an Officer of the Court
Having recently faced the ignominy of obliterating Peter Jaconelli (who would have been prosecuted for multiple child sex offences were he still alive) from the honours boards in the Town Hall at Scarborough, it is difficult to gauge the rationale for the Council bringing down another firestorm of criticism upon itself.
However, in a sensational twist to the Kenyon tale, another seriously damaging allegation has had further light shed upon it. New and probative evidence has been passed to me, anonymously, concerning an alleged fraudulent benefit fraud claim made by Bill Miller. This was the subject of an article in Private Eye magazine in May 2014 and followed an attempt by Scarborough Council to smear Nigel Ward. This backfired spectacularly when Ward was able to hand the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) investigator a copy of the able-bodied Miller’s 1996 ‘disability claim’ which had been leaked to him from the Town Hall. Now, there is an audio recording in which a leading Borough and County Councillor, David Jeffels, is heard, very clearly, to discuss a fraudulent claim by a local Councillor which, allegedly, was settled at a tribunal by payment of a sum, thought to be £25,000, by the alleged benefits cheat. Incredibly, if all this is true, and can be linked to the Private Eye story on Miller (and by default Kenyon) it would leave Council lawyer Mrs Dixon scratching her head: She is already supposed to have investigated this matter – and presumably filed it in the ‘nothing to see here’ box. It also puts the Council in another tight spot and, potentially, facing the eradication of another name from the Alderman honours board.
I have also very recently seen documents that confirm that Bill Miller is, in fact, under investigation by the DWP and there is a hearing scheduled for early Summer 2016.
In this regard, it is worth noting that her local electorate in the Mayfield ward turfed Kenyon off the Council at the last election, in May 2015. Not inconceivably, as a result of all the negative publicity she had visited upon the town over her scandalous conduct. It is reported that she left the election count in tears, after the result was announced. She is also reportedly furious with the Real Whitby and North Yorkshire Enquirer journalists for exposing scandal after scandal about her, as if they had no right whatsoever to do so
Following the blanking out of Jaconelli’s name there were 26 Honorary Aldermen remaining on the board in the Town Hall at Scarborough. It now seems certain, as more and more allegations surface about Jane Kenyon, that sometime in the coming months there will be another blank space after the rubbing out of another disgraced civic figure.
Another interesting, and high profile, past nomination was that of Cllr Eileen Bosomworth (whom I have also met). She was the Leader of the Council during the nationally notorious £56 million High Point Rendel scandal, but despite the strong stench of corruption and lawlessness around the whole affair, and only serving fourteen years rather than the requisite sixteen, less than two years later Mrs Bosomworth was conferred with the honour of Alderman.
Just as strange as the 2013 decision by North Yorkshire County Council to make Jane Kenyon an Alderman of the County. But, of course, at that time knowledge of her misdemeanours was not no widespread – and the efforts to silence her critics not quite so frantic. Or, as well funded via the public purse.
Mrs Kenyon-Miller was not available for comment prior to publication of this article. I am presently trying to track down Bill Miller: last seen emerging from his Mercedes motor car (Reg no TWM 1) parked on double yellow lines outside Scarborough Town Hall. He appeared remarkably sprightly for a man reputedly disabled for the past twenty years.
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Page last updated on Monday 29th February, 2016 at 1415hrs
Author Neil WilbyPosted on November 21, 2015 November 10, 2016 Categories North Yorks Police, NYPCCTags Belvedere Computers Inc, Dales Timber Ltd, David Jeffels, David Kitson, Della Cannings, Dr Judith Heeley, Gabrielle Jandzio, Jane Kenyon; Jane Kenyon-Miller; Bernard Kenyon; John Poulson; Bill Miller; William Miller; Thomas William Miller; Lisa Dixon; North Yorkshire Police Authority; Peter Jaconelli; Jimmy Savile; Eileen B, John Poulson, Julia Mulligan, Lisa Dixon, Lisa Dixon Scarborough Borough Council, Nigel Ward, Nigel Ward journalist, Phil Willis, Sir Bernard Kenyon, Tim Hicks, TWM 1Leave a comment on Former Police Authority Chair in fresh Alderman storm