Investigation leads to better vetting as Northants Police look to appoint chief
It follows ex-Chief Constable Nick Adderley leaving the force
The investigation into how a Northamptonshire Police chief who was found to have lied about his career went under the radar for so long has led to better-enforced vetting checks nationally, says the Police Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC).
Ex-chief constable Nick Adderley was dismissed from the force earlier this summer after he was found to have committed gross misconduct by fabricating many items on his CV. This included exaggerating his service in the Navy from two years to a decade and falsely stating his position as a military negotiator in Haiti in the 1980s among many others.
Northants PFCC Danielle Stone told the police fire and crime panel yesterday (Thursday, September 19) that her team had been in touch with the Home Office and the College of Policing to share their internal findings on vetting procedures.
She said: “After the Nick Adderley case we made a commitment to you and the public to have a really good look at vetting. We found it had been a terrible story, in actual fact it was shocking.
“There’s two different levels of vetting that goes on and they weren’t talking to each other, so the fact that that particular person has different things on each vetting form was never known and never dealt with.
“My office has been in touch with the home office… because it’s their job to make sure those vetting procedures are synchronised.
“From now on all qualifications are going to be checked during the vetting- it’s shocking that they weren’t but from now on not just in our police force but across the country they will be.
“Out of something terrible, because of the work that we have done, we are setting the standard for what’s going on in the rest of the country.”
She said that high-level vetting of senior officers in Northants Police had since been re-checked by the acting chief constable and no issues were found.
Ms Stone also told the panel that her office was in the process of working on the appointment of a new permanent chief to the service and that there would be an update before the end of October.