Background
Alison Pinnock challenged the IOPC’s February 2025 decision not to uphold her appeal against the Metropolitan Police Service’s handling of complaints arising from her September 2015 arrest in Walsall. She had been arrested at the MPS’s request after an insurance investigator alleged that she had assaulted him and taken documents. She was later charged with battery and acquitted.
During her police interview, Pinnock said she had previously been harassed by police, including an incident at the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s London offices in 2013 or 2014, where she said officers pulled her from the building and injured her. In a 2021 appeal decision, the IOPC held that her concerns raised in interview should not simply have been treated as outside the complaints process and directed the MPS to handle her complaints. The MPS later investigated the arrest but did not investigate the NMC allegation. The IOPC held in 2025 that the NMC matter had not formed part of the complaint and would need to be raised separately.
The Court’s Holding
Robert Palmer KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court judge, dismissed Pinnock’s challenge to the IOPC’s conclusions about the September 2015 arrest. The IOPC was entitled to review material not considered by the MPS without ordering reinvestigation, and reasonably concluded that it made no difference. The police had a proper basis to investigate the insurance investigator’s allegation; after Pinnock declined voluntary interview, the arrest was not harassment.
However, the court held that the IOPC erred in law by treating the NMC allegation as outside the appeal. Its 2021 decision had already found that Pinnock’s interview account could not properly be regarded as not amounting to a complaint. Although Pinnock had not expressly identified the NMC incident when later clarifying her complaint heads, the MPS remained obliged to ascertain the prior incidents to which she referred. The court quashed the IOPC’s decision to that limited extent and required reconsideration of the appeal concerning the uninvestigated NMC complaint.
Key Takeaways
- A police complaint may be made orally; it need not be in writing.
- An IOPC appeal decision cannot disregard an allegation previously recognised as part of the complaint without lawful justification.
- The upheld NMC issue does not undermine the lawfulness of the separate 2015 arrest decision.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes between an unsupported allegation that a lawful arrest formed part of a wider campaign of harassment and a separate, serious complaint about earlier police conduct. Complaint handlers must identify and address allegations that have been raised, even where they do not support the complainant’s wider theory.
The ruling also confirms that judicial review relief will not be withheld under section 31(2A) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 where the court cannot say it is highly likely that proper consideration of an omitted complaint would have made no substantial difference.