Humberside’s chief constable, David Westwood, is personally blamed for a "deeply shocking" series of failures which failed to identify Ian Huntley as a danger.
He refuses to stand down, despite David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, ordering his suspension.
Sir Michael Bichard’s report into how Huntley got the job despite a series of sex allegations, delivers a damning verdict which leaves no organisat
ions involved exempt from criticism.
THE career of the chief constable of Humberside was hanging by a thread last night after a damning report blamed him personally for errors that meant the Soham killer, Ian Huntley, was not identified as a threat to children.
As pressure for David Westwood to resign intensified, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, took the unprecedented step of using new powers to order his immediate suspension. But the embattled officer, who has been head of the force for five years, remained defiant.
At a press conference hours after Mr Blunkett told the Commons that Mr Westwood should stand down, the Chief Constable insisted that he had a duty to his officers, "and to the parents of Holly and Jessica", to stay in his job.
Sir Michael Bichard, the civil servant responsible for the inquiry into how Huntley got a job as a school caretaker in Soham - where he went on to murder ten-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman - found what he called a "deeply shocking" catalogue of errors, omissions, failures and shortcomings.
In a wide-ranging and highly critical 200-page report, Sir Michael reserved his harshest criticism for the "systematic and corporate" failings of Humberside Police, for which Mr Westwood was, he said, personally responsible.
He blamed him for the "very serious failings" at Humberside - there was not one occasion in all of the contacts with Huntley, including eight sexual-offence allegations, when the record system worked properly - and concluded that he should take "personal responsibility" for these.
Most damning of all was Sir Michael’s judgment that failings were so extensive that he suspected Huntley was not the only paedophile to have escaped detection by police.
Humberside’s failures were "not isolated or the result of simple human errors", the report said. The force’s local intelligence system was "fundamentally flawed" and its child-protection database was "largely worthless".
There was a lack of effective guidance and training, widespread ignorance of how records were created, and confusion about what was meant by weeding, reviewing and deletion.
As a result, Sir Michael said, "intelligence haemorrhaged in an alarming way", and the pattern of Huntley’s criminal behaviour was not identified remotely soon enough.
At a press conference for the report’s publication, Sir Michael told reporters: "I can’t tell the public, and I can’t tell you, that Huntley was the only person that slipped through the net."
It emerged only after his conviction last November that Huntley was at the centre of four alleged rapes, an alleged indecent assault on an 11-year-old, and four alleged incidents of under-age sex.
Mr Blunkett told the Commons: "It is Sir Michael’s view that the final responsibility for these serious failures rests with Chief Constable David Westwood. It is difficult to disagree with this."
He said that he had ordered the Police Authority to suspend Mr Westwood until July while his local authority considers a report by Sir Keith Povey, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, into the affair. Once they report back to him, Mr Westwood may be ordered to resign or retire.
Sir Michael left no organisation involved in the Soham investigation exempt from blame. He identified failures by Cambridgeshire Police, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, North East Lincolnshire Social Services and the Police Information Technology Organisation. A second chief constable, Tom Lloyd of Cambridgeshire Police, also came under fire. Sir Michael found that "serious errors" were made by his force and concluded he should have identified them "earlier than he did".
A second report into how Cambridge Police carried out the Soham murder inquiry also identified mistakes.
Written by Sir Ronnie Flanagan, of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, it concluded that the investigation into the disappearance of Jessica and Holly - one of the biggest in British history - suffered from a "lack of grip" in the first 48 hours.
It also criticised the decision of Mr Lloyd to go on holiday in the early days of the investigation, but said the officers showed "determination and commitment" that led to the arrest of Huntley 13 days into the investigation.
The Bichard report listed a series of flaws in police intelligence handling - which Sir Michael described as the cornerstone of modern policing - in England and Wales.
There was evidence to suggest a similar situation could not have arisen in Scotland. Unlike the 43 constabularies south of the Border, all Scottish forces share information on potential offenders, alerting them to new intelligence and movements of individuals, particularly in the case of those convicted of offences against children who apply for jobs that may bring them into contact with youngsters.
Sir Michael appeared incredulous that - unlike the system in place in Scotland, which was introduced in 1992 - police officers across England and Wales have no access to an integrated police intelligence database that allows them to share information on suspects.
The report concluded that under the Scottish system, the force may have been alerted to intelligence on Huntley because Lincolnshire still had the intelligence file.
Sir Michael recommended a series of urgent changes. The most important, to be carried out by the Home Office, were: the introduction of a national IT intelligence system; the introduction by 2005 of a system that flags up when intelligence is held by other forces; and the investment to secure the long-term future of the existing Police National Computer.
