Neil Wilby Media

A promotional photograph of Lancashire Constabulary’s chief constable, Sacha Hatchett, shows her standing against a corporate backdrop emblazoned with four words:

Professional. Accountable. Respectful. United.

On the force’s own website, the message is echoed in a sweeping pledge:

“Here at Lancashire Constabulary we are committed to a nationally recognised set of behaviours and values. All employees who join the team believe in a common code of ethics and are dedicated to demonstrating all that this entails and creating an inclusive and open-minded workforce that reflects our local communities. Serving our public respectfully and fairly with integrity and transparency is at the heart of everything we do.”

Fine words. But against the growing weight of evidence, they risk sounding less like a promise and more like a parody.

Words versus deeds

Over the past two weeks, Neil Wilby Media has published a series of articles examining Lancashire Constabulary’s handling of a so-called “task force” devoted to the handling of multiple complaints made by or about a single individual; the conduct of Inspector Daniel Clough as a central figure in that operation; and the police silence that followed when the force was confronted over Clough’s words appearing in evidence in the High Court in London, intended to favour one party over another.

There are two more articles due to be published shortly that reveal serious integrity and professionalism concerns over the very unit charged with upholding those core policing principles: Lancashire’s hapless, hopeless Professional Standards Department (PSD).

Another article in preparation lays bare the ‘car-crash’ that is the force’s Legal Services Department.

Taken together, or even article by article, the picture that emerges is not one of professionalism, accountability, respect or unity. It is of opacity, defensiveness, evasion and division.

• Professional?
  Inspectors repeatedly failed to record and investigate crimes in line with Home Office requirements, including a murder plot, whilst filing complaints against the same bailed suspect without explanation. The same Inspectors writing emails to support that suspect, reassuring him that complaints were being closed down, whilst dismissing complainants’ concerns, including those of a rape complainant and a protected Crown witness. Intervening on behalf of the bailed suspect in the High Court has also been put under a journalistic microscope.

• Accountable?
  Professional Standards officers whom repeatedly misapply, or don’t know, the law and cannot, or will, not explain their own decisions adequately; especially mischaracterisation and downplaying of serious conduct and regulatory complaints as customer service issues. Legal Services lawyers who fail to respond to pre-action letters and have been accused of wholesale disclosure failings and deliberately misleading courts. Data protection officers, aided by PSD, refuse to erase data in line with UK GDPR. The same culture is evident in the handling of Freedom of Information requests, where the force repeatedly breaks statutory deadlines, misuses exemptions, and forces applicants into lengthy battles with the Information Commissioner and Tribunal hearings. A press office that stonewalls legitimate enquiries from a journalist recognised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, even when furnished with unarguable documentary evidence.

• Respectful?
  If and when replies to communications are received — and silence is far more common than response — respect and courtesy are in short supply. Victims describing “the worst five days of my life” and “someone is going to die” ignored, stakeholders repeatedly left in the dark, investigation updates rarely provided and critics brushed off for their “tone.”

• United?
  Or a covert group, led by a superintendent and the force solicitor, operating a £250,000 per year “task force” concealed from colleagues, the public and, so his office says, the Police and Crime Commissioner. Internal divisions laid bare by the suspicion that senior officers sanctioned a suspect’s release without charge and remand, contrary to operational briefings, and then refused to say who made the call.

These are not isolated lapses. They represent a culture that runs counter to the values on the wall and the pledge on the website.

The backdrop becomes the story, not least as the very same Sacha Hatchett held the Command Team portfolio for both Legal Services and PSD  during her four year spell as Deputy Chief Constable. As DCC, the secret ‘Task Force’ would, very arguably, also have been under her purview.

Corporate slogans are meant to inspire public confidence. They are repeated in speeches, printed in glossy strategy documents, and stuck to the walls of headquarters. But they also create a standard by which the organisation can be judged.

When the force’s conduct falls short — when it is neither professional, nor accountable, nor respectful — the branding becomes evidence in itself. A smiling photograph set against those four words turns into an emblem of the gap between appearance and reality.

Silence as strategy

Institutional silence has become a recurring theme. Requests for right of reply about the High Court email were ignored. A direct request for a statement from the Head of Professional Standards went unanswered.

The silence is not neutral. It shifts the focus from the officer in question to the institution as a whole. If Lancashire Constabulary will not explain or defend the words of its own inspector, the public is entitled to ask why.

This is not an isolated refusal. The same silence greets Freedom of Information requests, complaints about data handling, and even questions raised in Parliament.

Silence becomes complicity.

The missing money, the delayed prosecutions.

Beyond the inspector’s emails, there are wider examples of this dissonance between pledge and practice.

• The missing £30,000: In March 2020, the force secured costs of £30,000 against a litigant in the High Court. Five years on, that money — public money, not Lancashire Constabulary’s own — has not been collected. Not a penny. Questions about its whereabouts remain unanswered.

• The delayed committal: A prolific and vexatious litigant subject to a lifetime injunction, and found in breach of it, continued to publish inflammatory material online for months. Only after Neil Wilby Media exposed the delay did the force move to apply for his committal to prison.

• Delete first, ask questions never: An internal email, revealed earlier this year, appeared to show a senior solicitor’s disposition to delete emails rather than be forced to disclose them later. That conduct, of which at least one court is now aware. Flatly at odds with transparency obligations, has since sparked alarm in legal and regulatory circles.

Each of these episodes, and this list is very far from exhaustive, corrodes the claim that Lancashire Constabulary is “committed to transparency, fairness and integrity.”

What values look like in practice

The College of Policing’s Code of Ethics requires officers and staff to act with honesty, integrity, fairness, respect, and accountability. These are not abstract aspirations; they are practical obligations.

• Being professional means treating every complainant with dignity, not reassuring suspects while dismissing victims.

• Being accountable means answering questions from journalists and courts alike, not hiding behind silence or procedural evasions.

• Being respectful means updating stakeholders about bail conditions promptly, not leaving them in fear for days.

• Being united means holding all officers, warranted and civilian, to the same standards, not circling the wagons to protect reputations. 

The gulf between these obligations and recent events could not be clearer.

A pledge tested by reality

Lancashire Constabulary’s pledge, displayed prominently on its website, reads well. It invokes integrity, inclusivity, and transparency. But pledges only matter if they withstand the test of reality.

Right now, reality is testing Lancashire Constabulary — and the institution is failing.

The force’s leadership, fronted by Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett, continues to promote the slogans. Yet the behaviour of its officers and departments is exposing the hollowness of the words.

Conclusion: Words matter, deeds matter more

Photographs, slogans and pledges can project any image a force chooses. But when they are contradicted by lived experience, they cease to be branding and become evidence.

Lancashire Constabulary has chosen four words to define itself: Professional. Accountable. Respectful. United.

The public is entitled to ask: Professional to whom? Accountable to whom? Respectful of whom? United for what purpose?

Until Lancashire Constabulary can reconcile its words with its deeds, those values will remain just that — words on a wall. And trust in policing will continue to ebb away, with consequences not just for reputation but for public safety.

Via the Lancs press office, Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett has been invited to clarify whether she still stands by the force’s proclaimed values.

The Office of the Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner, elected to hold CC Hatchett to account, has also been approached for a statement.

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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: Friday 5th September 2025 at 11h15

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Image Credits: Lancashire Constabulary

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