Neil Wilby Media

On 10th March 2025, Neil Wilby Media exclusively exposed a troubling controversy within Lancashire Constabulary (Lancs), highlighting the apparent non-payment of a £30,000 costs award granted to the force by a Recorder, (part-time judge) at Liverpool County Court in March, 2020. Sitting alongside disturbing failures by the police to enforce a High Court injunction, obtained as part of the same proceedings, protecting their own officers from serious online harassment and abuse.

In a new development, the force has now, belatedly, responded to a subsequent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking clarity about what enforcement actions they took over breaches of that injunction. However, rather than dispelling doubts, their reply has raised fresh concerns about the force’s understanding of its legal obligations, as well as its willingness—or ability—to operate transparently.

This follow-up investigation examines the adequacy of Lancs’ FOIA response, explores worrying gaps in its officers’ understanding of FOIA law, and asks whether Lancashire police are capable of providing the transparency and accountability the public deserves.

Neil Wilby’s original report detailed two serious concerns:

• A High Court injunction (Case F70LV339) granted in March 2020 required Lancashire Constabulary’s antagonist, who cannot be named due to ongoing proceedings, to cease harassment and remove abusive online content targeting specific police officers. Breaches of this injunction remain clearly visible to the public on the offender’s website, yet the force has failed to enforce it.

• Additionally, Lancashire Constabulary was awarded £30,000 in legal costs associated with obtaining the injunction. As yet, there appears no public record of this sum being recovered or any enforcement action pursued by the force.

The article posed serious questions about the integrity of the force’s financial management and the police’s commitment to upholding court orders designed explicitly to protect their own officers from harm.

To obtain answers directly from Lancashire Constabulary, a FOIA request was submitted, specifically asking whether the force had enforced the injunction and what action it had taken regarding breaches of its terms. It can be read in full here.

Instead of providing clear answers, the force responded vaguely, asserting that it was unable to confirm or deny whether enforcement action was taken. Or, whether or not they had collected the £30,000 (plus the £11,000 accrued interest).

Most troublingly, their response cited section 40(5) of the FOIA—without specifying whether subsection (i), (ii)(a), or (ii)(b) applied. This lack of clarity raised concerns about whether officers handling the request, including the ‘information owner’, Force Solicitor Sharon Cottam, fully understand the Act and its correct application.

Or, as has happened previously with requests made by the same applicant, Lancs made a pre-formed decision not to disclose and arranged weak, implausible and, indeed, unlawful reasoning around that outcome.

Neil Wilby, the author of this article, a journalist and experienced information rights practitioner, described the force’s handling of the request as “seriously flawed”:

“FOIA Section 40(5) is highly specific. Lancashire Constabulary’s inability to clearly state which subsection applies strongly suggests that the officers responsible lacked the necessary detailed knowledge to handle FOIA requests appropriately. It raises significant concerns about their training, awareness, and compliance with the law.”

Perhaps most strikingly, Lancs initially appeared unaware that FOIA legislation requires authorities to respond “promptly.” The standard interpretation of Section 10(1) of the Act is that 20 working days is not a target date, but an absolute backstop—ergo, public authorities must answer requests as quickly as reasonably possible.

Remarkably, even after this obligation was pointed out explicitly in correspondence related to the FOIA request (including providing them with an excerpt from the Act), Lancashire Constabulary persisted with the notion that they could take the full 20 working days on what was the very simplest of requests that required answering with no more than  ‘Not paid’ and ‘None’ to the two questions asked of them.

This irksome conduct reveals both a disturbing lack of familiarity with fundamental transparency law, and a cavalier approach towards it, among senior police officers.

Transparency advocate, Felicity Smith, says:

“For any public authority— but especially a police force—to fail to grasp such basic FOIA obligations is alarming. It undermines public trust and raises serious concerns about accountability and openness.

“Even limited research on the WhatDoThey Know FOIA platform tends to show that this is not an isolated incident involving Lancashire Constabulary”.

Two lawyers with specialist knowledge of this case have previously contacted Neil Wilby Media, highlighting the serious implications of the force’s apparent failure to enforce an injunction intended to protect its own officers from harassment and abuse, despite clear evidence of ongoing breaches visible online.

The court order explicitly required the offender to remove all abusive content by a specified date and desist from repeating the harassment. Yet, five years later, multiple breaches remain accessible to the public.

“Failing to enforce an injunction, particularly one protecting their own officers, amounts to an abdication of responsibility. This sets a dangerous precedent, undermining court authority, weakening the protection offered by injunctions, and ultimately eroding public confidence in law enforcement.”

“Equally concerning, if not more so, is that the antagonist, encouraged by lack of police action against him, projects invincibility when targeting members of the public. Some of them elderly and vulnerable”.

Lancashire Constabulary’s handling of this FOIA request—and their broader response to injunction breaches—aligns disturbingly with a wider trend identified by recent national investigations.

In 2023, reports showed police forces In England and Wales regularly failed to enforce injunctions or restraining orders, sometimes with fatal consequences. The Independent newspaper found prosecutions of restraining order breaches had dropped significantly nationwide. Critics suggest this reflects a troubling institutional indifference within policing.

Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, recently underscored this issue:

“Court orders like these are intended to protect vulnerable victims. If police don’t enforce breaches consistently and robustly, victims lose faith in the system and offenders become emboldened.”

Here, alarmingly, the primary “victims” ignored by police inaction are the officers of Lancashire Constabulary themselves. Secondary victims, members of the public, as mentioned earlier in this piece, being those targeted as a result of the antagonist’s empowerment.

Given Lancs opaque FOIA response, critics will naturally question whether the police force is deliberately avoiding transparency because it failed to enforce its injunction from the outset and collect the outstanding £41,000.

Such deliberate evasion would represent a serious failure of transparency obligations.

The force’s inadequate response to the FOIA request and misunderstanding of basic FOIA provisions only strengthen suspicions of an attempted force-wide ‘cover-up’ or, at best, institutional incompetence.

Felicity Smith adds:

“Public authorities sometimes misuse or misunderstand FOIA exemptions as a tactic to avoid scrutiny. In this case, it’s hard not to see Lancashire’s response as a deliberate attempt to obscure accountability for what seems to be two significant operational failures that both impact adversely on Lancashire constituents.”

Given these troubling revelations, calls for accountability have intensified. Potential next steps include:

• ICO investigation into Lancashire Constabulary’s FOIA compliance deficit.
• IOPC inquiry into the police’s apparent neglect of duty regarding injunction enforcement and non-collection of substantial public funds.
• The Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner requesting that the chief constable oversees an internal investigation into both the FOIA handling and the injunction and costs enforcement failures. Or, better still, invite another police force to conduct it.

Transparency advocates are also calling more immediately for enhanced FOIA training within Lancashire Constabulary to prevent future failures with disclosure obligations under the Act.

This follow-up investigation builds upon Neil Wilby Media’s earlier exclusive, exposing deeper systemic issues within Lancashire Constabulary. It shows troubling gaps in the police’s understanding of lawful FOIA requirements, combined with an apparent failure to enforce injunctions designed to protect their own staff and enable them to recover a substantial sum of precept payer funds – £41,000 and rising – and, most concerning of all, a propensity to deceive and cover-up such misdemeanours.

Such failures risk profound damage to public trust. The onus now lies with Lancashire Constabulary to answer openly, accept responsibility, and demonstrate a commitment to genuine transparency and robust accountability. Until they do, serious questions about their operational integrity and compliance with the law remain unanswered.

The public—and particularly the affected police officers themselves—deserve nothing less.

UPDATE: This article, and its predecessor piece ,has been met with a stoney silence not just from Lancashire Constabulary and its Police and Crime Commissioner, notwithstanding its adverse impact on public confidence in policing in the county.

Almost as significant, is the absence of the expected and conventionally savage outbursts on social media, and the wider internet, from the antagonist whose breaches of the subject injunction, and others restraining orders attached to him, cause so much angst: No angry denial of the injunction breaches and no confident assertion that he paid the legal costs awarded to Lancs. Both completely out of character.

But, most surprising of all, is there has been no threats of legal action against Neil Wilby Media from a perpetual (and almost entirely vexatious) civil litigant regarding either the exposé or this follow-up article.