Merseyside Police Forced to Concede Judicial Review After Attempting to Bury Corruption Allegations

In the opaque world of police complaints, the “Appropriate Authority“, often referred to as the ‘AA’ holds all the cards.

They decide what is a crime, what is a mistake, and crucially, who gets to review their complaint handling.

A recent pre-action Judicial Review legal challenge against Merseyside Police has exposed just how this power is regularly being abused to protect officers from independent investigation.

This week, Merseyside Police were forced to concede in the face of an imminent High Court Judicial Review (JR).

Their concession, admitting that serious allegations of corruption and evidence tampering should have been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), reveals a disturbing pattern of “gatekeeping” within the Professional Standards Department (PSD).

The RRB (Relevant Review Body) Trick

Under the Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2020, the police force must determine who the “Relevant Review Body” (RRB) is.

• The OPCC: Reviews minor “service level” complaints (rudeness, delays).

• The IOPC: Must review any complaint involving allegations that, if proved, would justify disciplinary proceedings or imply criminality.

The law is clear: Paragraph 18.6(iii) of the Statutory Guidance states that if an allegation involves serious misconduct, the police cannot keep the review in-house or send it to the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC). It must be a mandatory referral to the IOPC.

Forces across the UK routinely abuse this delegation power by deliberately misclassifying serious allegations as “minor”, most complainants have no idea they are being deceived.  PSD try to route as many appeals of their complaint decisions to the OPCC, a body that often lacks the teeth or the statutory power to investigate criminal misconduct, effectively, burying the complaint.

“Framing” Corruption as a Customer Service Issue

In the case in question, a complainant submitted detailed allegations against Merseyside officers. These were not trivial grievances. The complaint alleged:

• Evidence tampering and withholding material evidence.

• Unlawful detention by a public servant.

• Perverting the course of justice by attempting to “frame” the suspect.

• Lying on official logs regarding the termination of calls.

Despite these allegations plainly meeting the threshold for “Gross Misconduct” or criminality, Merseyside PSD, Detective Inspector Dave Sung, designated the OPCC as the Review Body, not the IOPC.

He effectively looked at an allegation of framing a suspect for a crime and decided it was simply a “customer service” issue.

It was only when the complainant issued a formal Pre-Action Protocol letter for Judicial Review, the first step in reviewing the police decision by the High Court, that the PSD scrambled to reverse their decision.

The “Oversight” Defence

When cornered, Detective Inspector Dave Sung of the Merseyside PSD Local Investigation Team conceded the point. However, his explanation raised more questions than it answered.

D/Insp Sung attempted to characterise the failure as a simple “oversight,” claiming he had simply missed the significance of the allegation. Yet, in the very same correspondence, he explicitly listed the allegation he had “missed”:

“[The Complainant] claims Merseyside Police… obstructed evidence and was part of an effort to protect [a third party] and frame him.”

It is logically incoherent for a Detective Inspector to read the words “obstruct evidence” and “frame him” and simultaneously determine that the mandatory misconduct threshold has not been met. This defence asks the public to believe that senior PSD officers are functionally illiterate regarding their own regulations.

The alternative explanation is far more sinister: that this was not incompetence, but malfeasance, a deliberate decision to suppress the severity of the complaint to avoid independent investigation by the IOPC.

Misinformation from the PSD

The case also highlighted the aggressive tactics used by civilian caseworkers to shut down valid legal challenges.

Before the concession, Caseworker Mike Bevin attempted to derail the complainant’s challenge. Bevin wrote to the complainant asserting that the OPCC had “confirmed” the decision was correct and that it “would not be appropriate” to correspond further.

This statement was demonstrably false. The OPCC had made no such comment and in any event, has no statutory power to confirm or validate the Appropriate Authority’s designation decision.

Bevin appeared to use a misrepresentation of the OPCC’s role to trick the complainant into abandoning their legal rights.

This tactic relies on the complainant being ignorant of the law. In this instance, it failed. The complainant stood their ground, citing the Wednesbury unreasonableness of the decision, and the Force backed down.

A Systemic Protection Racket?

If D/Insp Sung now admits that the allegations amounted to “corruption” requiring mandatory referral, then his admission has a secondary, explosive consequence: it means the police initially investigated a corruption allegation themselves, without lawful authority.

By investigating a matter that should have been instantly referred to the IOPC, the PSD acted ultra vires (beyond their powers). They effectively acted as judge and jury on their own colleagues regarding criminal allegations.

Unsurprisingly, of the 11 detailed complaints, Gary Doran, Local Investigation Officer in the PSD Local Investigation Team, investigated Merseyside Police and found it did nothing wrong in every complaint. Gary Doran is, an ex-police officer.

This case serves as a warning to the public. Merseyside Police only followed the law when threatened with the High Court.

How many other complaints involving serious corruption are currently sitting in the “Service Level” pile because the complainants did not know how to properly use a Judicial Review?

The “gatekeeping” of the IOPC referral system is not just a bureaucratic quirk; it is a mechanism that allows police forces to launder misconduct allegations into oblivion.

Until the power to designate the Review Body is removed from the police entirely, “accountability” will remain a purely theoretical concept.

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Have you been a victim of this “Gatekeeping”?

This case proves that Police Professional Standards Departments often rely on the public’s lack of legal knowledge to downgrade serious complaints.

If you have submitted a complaint involving serious misconduct or criminality, but the police have told you that the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) is your only route of appeal, you may have been misdirected.

We want to hear from you.

If you believe your complaint has been wrongly classified to protect officers from IOPC oversight, contact UKCP today. We can assist you in reviewing the designation decision and help you challenge the police if they have applied the wrong statutory test. Do not let them mark their own homework.