Background
Paul Nugent was arrested on 7 January 2020 by DC Mount of Greater Manchester Police on suspicion of stalking involving fear of violence, contrary to s.4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The alleged victim, RSL, was his former partner who had previously made allegations of rape, harassment and coercive behaviour. Those earlier allegations had been investigated and marked no further action in June 2019. In November 2019, RSL made fresh complaints of stalking and harassment; DC Mount was appointed investigating officer and, after consulting the more senior DS Barker, decided to arrest Mr Nugent at his home. He was detained at Bury police station, interviewed and released on conditional bail. Both the stalking and the re-opened rape investigations were ultimately marked no further action in 2021.
Mr Nugent brought a claim in the County Court at Manchester for wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and trespass. HHJ Khan, in a judgment dated 1 July 2025, found that DC Mount honestly believed arrest was necessary but held there were objectively no reasonable grounds for that belief. He awarded Mr Nugent £8,620. The judge’s reasoning turned on the absence of evidence that DC Mount had considered less intrusive alternatives — specifically, a combination of a search warrant, voluntary interview, and an application for an Interim Stalking Protection Order (ISPO) under the Stalking Protection Act (SPA). The Chief Constable appealed.
The appeal raised a point of general importance: the proper objective standard for assessing an officer’s belief in the necessity of arrest under s.24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), and whether the County Court judge had applied it correctly. Unusually, DC Mount did not give oral evidence at trial due to illness; her written statements were tendered as hearsay evidence. DS Barker, who had approved the arrest, gave oral evidence but was not cross-examined on her reasons for believing arrest was necessary.
The Court’s Holding
Mrs Justice Dias DBE allowed the appeal. The central and dispositive error in the judge’s reasoning was his treatment of an ISPO as a practical alternative to arrest available on 7 January 2020. In fact, the Stalking Protection Act did not come into force until 20 January 2020, and the commencement order bringing it into force was not even made until 9 January 2020 — two days after Mr Nugent’s arrest. An ISPO was therefore not even a theoretical option at the date of arrest. Since the judge had explicitly treated the combination of a search warrant, voluntary interview and ISPO as a package, and had not suggested that a search warrant and voluntary interview alone would have negated the grounds for arrest, the foundation of his conclusion collapsed once the ISPO element was removed.
The court also held that the ISPO point had never been pleaded by Mr Nugent, was not raised in his skeleton argument, and was first ventilated during cross-examination of DS Barker — on the entirely false basis that an ISPO could have been sought as early as November 2019. While counsel for Mr Nugent accepted without demur that he should have checked the legal position before putting his questions, Mrs Justice Dias found this was unfairly prejudicial, particularly given that DS Barker had no advance notice and DC Mount was unable to give oral evidence. Had the point been properly pleaded, the Chief Constable would have had a fair opportunity to adduce evidence addressing it.
The court rejected Ground 1 of the appeal — the contention that the judge had wrongly treated arrest as an option of last resort — finding that the judge had directed himself correctly in law on the necessity test. However, on Grounds 2, 3 and 5 the court concluded that, given DS Barker’s unchallenged evidence supporting the necessity of arrest and the unavailability of an ISPO at the relevant date, the judge’s conclusion that there were objectively no reasonable grounds for DC Mount’s belief could not stand.
Key Takeaways
- The objective reasonableness of an officer’s belief in the necessity of arrest under s.24 PACE must be assessed by reference to the information available to the arresting officer at the time — including which statutory powers and practical alternatives actually existed on that date.
- An alternative to arrest that was not legally available at the date of arrest (here, an ISPO under legislation not yet in force) cannot negate the objective reasonableness of an officer’s decision to arrest.
- Fairness demands that specific grounds challenging the necessity of an arrest — particularly novel or time-sensitive alternatives — be pleaded or at minimum raised in skeleton arguments before trial, not sprung on witnesses in cross-examination, especially where a key police witness is unable to give oral evidence.
- Unchallenged evidence from a more senior officer who approved the arrest decision carries weight in the objective assessment of necessity where it is not contradicted and the witness is not cross-examined on that issue.
- The absence of evidence as to consideration of alternatives does not automatically mean an officer’s belief lacked reasonable grounds; the court must assess whether, on the facts actually known to the officer, reasonable grounds objectively existed.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the proper application of the objective necessity test for arrest under s.24 PACE in the context of stalking investigations, reinforcing that the lawfulness of an arrest is assessed against the legal and factual landscape as it actually existed at the moment of arrest — not as it existed weeks later or as it might have been wished to exist. Officers and claimants alike must ground their analysis in what powers were truly available at the relevant time, a point with particular practical significance as new protective legislation is phased in via commencement orders on rolling dates.
The decision also carries an important procedural lesson for civil claims against the police: challenges to the objective reasonableness of an officer’s necessity belief — especially those relying on specific alternative courses of action — must be identified in pleadings or at least in pre-trial submissions. Courts will not allow claimants to ambush police witnesses at trial with theories that were never disclosed in advance, particularly where the primary officer involved is unable to attend to respond.