Chief Constable only acted after ultimatum from top colleague

When North Yorkshire Police’s hotline buckled under the weight of up to 500,000 calls from applicants in February last year, Mr Maxwell decided to help a relative of his deputy Adam Briggs to jump the queue and progress to the next phase of the entry scheme for would-be constables.

But the matter was only flagged up after Assistant Chief Constable Sue Cross challenged Mr Maxwell to report it to North Yorkshire Police Authority, warning him that she would if he did not.

Mr Maxwell contacted the authority’s chairman Jane Kenyon on March 2 last year, after which he and Mr Briggs were asked to give a full explanation in writing.

It took the chief constable another week to confess his own act of nepotism in the affair – that he had helped an extended relative through the first stage of the recruitment exercise by calling him personally and taking his details.

On learning that North Yorkshire’s own professional standards department (PSD) would be investigating, Mr Maxwell told force solicitor Simon Dennis about his role and, in Mr Dennis’s words, admitted he had been an “a*******”. Mr Maxwell denies using that word.

Details of the affair are included in a report published by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which looked into the conduct of Mr Maxwell and Mr Briggs.

The inquiry was initially conducted by Staffordshire Chief Constable Mike Cunningham, but the IPCC took full control after Mr Cunningham decided the allegations were not serious enough to warrant gross misconduct charges. The IPCC report reveals that North Yorkshire hoped to recruit 60 to 70 constables through the application scheme, which required candidates to call a vetting hotline in a “first come, first served system”.

Callers who successfully passed the vetting procedure would be given a link to a website where they could access an application form, but the vast majority of applicants were unable to get through and some were cut off.

The force agreed only to call back applicants who had managed to leave their details before being cut off, but two candidates who had failed to get through at all were also contacted.

One of them was a relative of Mr Briggs, identified only as Ms A. After Mr Briggs mentioned to Mr Maxwell that she had been unable to speak to a call-handler, the chief constable decided that Ms A’s details should be given to a staff member, Mrs C, who would contact her to complete the vetting form.

The other ineligible candidate to receive a call was a member of Mr Maxwell’s extended family, identified as Mr B. Mr Maxwell called him after the hotline had been fixed – during a Press conference to show that the recruitment system was back up and running.

IPCC investigators found that Mr Maxwell had previously arranged for Mr B’s contact details to be sent to Mrs C so they could be passed on to the force’s human resources department.

The recruitment campaign was scrutinised by other North Yorkshire officers after an anonymous email, reporting concerns about the behaviour of some human resources staff, was sent to the PSD.

The email eventually led to two investigations – one into Mr Maxwell and Mr Briggs, and a separate inquiry into the human resources department, which resulted in two civilian staff being sacked and a constable receiving a final written warning.

IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long praised the “courage” and integrity of senior officers and staff who decided to challenge Mr Maxwell and Mr Briggs.

Ironically, no police officers were employed as a result of the recruitment campaign after the force decided it could not afford to hire any.

Helping hand for relative of deputy

In media interviews about North Yorkshire Police’s officer recruitment drive, Deputy Chief Constable Adam Briggs told reporters the system was “first come served, it can’t be fairer than that”.

But one of Mr Briggs’s relatives, identified only as Ms A by the IPCC, was helped through the initial application stage despite failing to get through on the force’s hotline.

Ms A only became aware of the week-long recruitment campaign on the day it began – February 8 last year – and she complained to Mr Briggs that he had not told her about it.

Mr Briggs told her that she would have to call the hotline to obtain an application form but, after she tried the next evening without success, she contacted him again.

On February 10, Mr Briggs discussed the issue with Mr Maxwell, who advised him to give Ms A’s contact details to a staff member, who called her that evening.

When confronted about this later, Mr Maxwell justified it by saying it was his duty to relieve Mr Briggs of stress caused by problems with the recruitment system.

Mr Briggs was cleared of misleading the public through his media statements, but he was found to have breached the code of conduct on two counts – discreditable conduct and failing to report improper conduct.

He retired from the force in February shortly after an acrimonious dispute with the police authority over a separate investigation into how he spent £10,000 on “executive coaching”.