Earlier today (20th July 2025), Neil Wilby Media published, exclusively, how the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has declined to release supporting material for its controversial “Six myths about police media briefings busted” article, published earlier this year in an attempt to stem growing criticism over the police media strategy before, during and after the Lucy Letby murder/attempted murder trials in 2023 and 2024.
This has done more than trigger a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) dispute. It further exposes the way policing’s national leadership is willing to stretch legal exemptions to protect not operational secrets, but communications strategy.
The Police Chiefs’ refusal has now been passed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for determination. But beyond the technical and legal arguments about section 31 (law enforcement) and section 40 (personal data), a bigger question emerges: Why is the NPCC so determined to hold this line?
The Easy Part: How?
The mechanics of the refusal are straightforward. Section 31 is an exemption designed to protect investigatory work, crime prevention, and offender apprehension. Yet NPCC has deployed it to shield internal emails, drafts and consultations about a website article.
The reasoning is that disclosure would ‘chill’ frank dialogue with partners such as the College of Policing, CPS and Cheshire Constabulary, and that such chilling could indirectly weaken crime prevention.
It is a neat contortion. Partnership candour is presented as an operational necessity, and communications planning as part of law enforcement. This manoeuvre allows NPCC to draw the shutters down, secure in the knowledge that the ICO backlog means any challenge may take months, if not longer, to resolve.
The Harder Part: Why?
If the refusal looks strained, the motivation behind it is more revealing. Several factors are at play:
1. Reputation management
The Lucy Letby investigation, charging and subsequent trials have shaken public trust in multiple institutions like never before: the NHS, hospital management, policing, the Crown Prosecution Service and even the senior judiciary. Within that rapid decaying of public confidence, media handling has become a central point of contention. Any disclosure that revealed strategic narrative-shaping by NPCC, or its partners, risks re-igniting criticism that policing prioritised message over openness and procedural fairness.
2. Institutional precedent
If NPCC concedes here, it sets a standard that communications material linked to sensitive cases is disclosable under FOIA. That precedent would be cited in every future request touching on high-profile investigations. The instinct is, therefore, to resist, even at the cost of legal contortions.
3. Centralisation of messaging
NPCC has sought in recent years to position itself as the authoritative voice of policing across England and Wales, particularly on high-profile or reputationally risky matters. Protecting that position means keeping a tight grip on how internal deliberations are presented to the outside world.
4. Fear of loss of control
Once draft emails and discussions are released, the narrative is no longer under NPCC control. Journalists and campaigners can test the gap between private deliberation and public pronouncement. For a leadership body anxious to project confidence, that appears to be a risk too far.
The Lucy Letby backdrop
The connection to the Letby case is crucial. Requests made to NPCC, Cheshire Constabulary and the College of Policing for records of communications strategy around the trial have all met with blanket refusals. The pattern is unmistakable.
Together, these refusals amount to what looks like a service-wide cover-up of how the Letby narrative was managed. It is not that operational policing is at stake — it is the credibility of the communications approach. By invoking section 31, the NPCC has built a defensive wall around that approach.
The public interest problem
The difficulty with this position is that it misjudges the public interest. Far from undermining policing, greater transparency around communications could strengthen trust. If the NPCC had disclosed the evidential basis for its “myth-busting” article, it would have demonstrated confidence in its message.
Instead, the reliance on broad exemptions conveys a different impression: that the NPCC has something to hide. It is a classic example of opacity breeding suspicion, the opposite of the intended effect.
What happens next
The ICO will eventually decide whether the exemptions were lawfully applied. That outcome may be months away. In the meantime, the refusal itself has become a case study in how policing organisations prioritise narrative management over transparency.
The NPCC’s determination to stretch the law enforcement exemption to cover public relations strategy says as much about institutional priorities as any eventual ruling. It is less about crime prevention and more about reputational containment.
Conclusion
The NPCC could have chosen candour, releasing material with names redacted and trusting the strength of its argument. Instead, it has chosen secrecy, invoking operational policing risks to shield a communications article.
The ICO may, or may not, order disclosure, but the damage is already done. The public lesson is clear: when it comes to questions of media handling, the instinct of national police leadership is not transparency, but control.
As reported earlier today (read in full here), the ICO complaint is now live, and its outcome will be closely watched across both policing and the media alike.
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Neil Wilby is a journalist, court reporter and transparency campaigner who has reported on police misconduct, regulatory failures, and criminal and civil justice since 2009. He is the founder and editor of Neil Wilby Media, launched in 2015.
Page last updated: Wednesday 20th August 2025 at 10h25
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