This case details how my client, Clayton Varley was wrongfully arrested after a serious administrative failure following a variation in his Crown Court bail conditions. Due to miscommunication between the Crown Court and the Electronic Monitoring Service, outdated GPS exclusion boundaries continued to be enforced, leading to Clayton’s arrest despite his full compliance with bail conditions. The error caused significant personal and professional harm. After legal action was threatened, the Ministry of Justice settled the claim with substantial damages and costs.
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100% of this week’s blog post was generated by me, the human.
Wrongful Arrest Due to GPS Tagging and Bail Condition Errors
In August 2023 my client Clayton Varley was arrested and charged with criminal offences. He was thereafter granted conditional bail, which included an obligation to wear a GPS (Global Positioning System) tag and a requirement, in rather archaic terms, “Not to go north of the River Thames”. This was what was known as the “Exclusion zone.”
Crown Court Bail Variation and Revised Exclusion Zone
Subsequently, the Crown Court varied Clayton’s bail condition such that he could go north of the River Thames, as long as he stayed within the confines of an area demarcated by a red line endorsed on a map produced by the Court – this was so as to allow him to visit the areas of the city where his mother and brother lived. Essentially what this meant was that Clayton could now go north of the River, but could not go north of the M25 motorway i.e. the London ‘boundary road’.
Electronic Monitoring, Ministry of Justice, and Private Contractors
As I have explained in previous blog posts, the monitoring of GPS exclusion zones (and timed curfews) is a public-private partnership between the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) on the one hand, and the Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS) on the other. EMS is not an entity in itself – it is the name of the franchise/project that is contracted out to a private company such as Serco or Capita, one of those big beasts of private enterprise who commercialise the criminal justice system.
Administrative Failures Leading to False Breach of Bail
The disjuncture between the MOJ and EMS gives rise to numerous errors based on misunderstandings or miscommunications between these two separate entities (with the Police service often as a third, complicating factor) and as an expert solicitor in the field of civil liberties, I am often called upon by those who have been harmed by such mistakes. Clayton was the latest of them.
Arrest, Police Custody, and Court Dismissal
After the hearing, Clayton ensured that he stayed within the parameters of his liberty as re-defined by the Crown Court i.e he could go north of the Thames River, but not north of the M25 motorway. Accordingly, when Clayton next attended his local Police Station to sign in on compliance with his overall bail conditions, he was shocked to discover that the Police were intending to arrest him for allegedly having entered the “exclusion zone”.
What made matters all the worse was that Clayton is employed as a funeral director, and had been engaged to arrange a funeral that very day. He explained to the Police his occupation and that he had a funeral to organise but his representations were ignored; given the fundamental importance of that event, Clayton had to make a series of desperate phone calls in order to not let the bereaved family down, by getting one of his competitors to take over conduct of the funeral.
Thereafter Clayton was kept in Police custody before being transferred, in handcuffs, to his local Magistrates Court. After an afternoon sweating in the cells, Clayton was brought before the Court at 6pm whereupon the allegation of breach of bail was summarily dismissed and he was released – the Court, of course, being fully aware of what the boundaries of the exclusion zone actually were.
How this mistake happened – and how I was able to help Clayton
I was able to give Clayton access to justice by representing him under a Conditional Fee (no win, no fee) agreement, and I then set about investigating who was to blame here between the MOJ, EMS & the Police.
I established that fault lay with the Crown Court, whose staff had firstly failed to send any map showing the new, post-variation boundary to EMS, and then had failed to send a sufficiently clear map. EMS had therefore continued to monitor the original exclusion zone.
11 days after the Crown Court bail variation, EMS ‘flagged up’ to the MOJ, that they had failed to provide the map showing the revised exclusion zone, and hence they (EMS) felt they had no choice but to continue as if the original exclusion zone was still in place. Finally, almost 3 weeks after the Crown Court decision, the MOJ did provide a revised map to EMS – but, even then, EMS felt that the new map was inadequate for them to do their job properly. It was described in Police documents as “a black and white map, zoomed out, of London in general, from which the line cannot be determined.” In the meantime, EMS had already reported Clayton to the Police for breaching his bail. Clayton, of course, had no way of knowing that EMS were still operating off the old boundaries.
This was the very opposite of the ‘joined-up’ thinking which is the least we are entitled to expect from a public- private partnership when people’s liberties and livelihoods are at stake. No-one should be at risk of incarceration because of a backlog in someone’s “in-tray.”
It is also striking how GPS monitoring using satellites is being paired with lines drawn on badly photocopied maps; a Frankenstein’s mashup of old and new technology, which is unsurprisingly causing monstrous problems.
After I threatened to bring Court proceedings under the Human Rights Act, I was able to get the MOJ to agree to settle Clayton’s claim for substantial damages plus legal costs.
I would like to think that this victory will have taught both the MOJ and EMS important lessons, which will lead to them not committing people to custody for their own ‘schoolboy’ errors in the future; but experience tells me that such big, faceless entities are slow learners, whether their bureaucracies are harmed by capitalist short-cuts or civil-service sclerosis.
Perhaps I need to draw them a map!
What My Client Said Afterwards
You can read below the review which Clayton posted at the conclusion of his case. Reviews like this mean more to me than words can say. If you get yourself caught up in this kind of particularly unpleasant game of “tag” with the Courts, EMS and the Police – you know who to call.
Last year I was wrongfully arrested, the police, EMS tagging company and the Crown Court are so badly run that it was a total mess, their negligence nearly ruined my business, so a friend of mine who had used Iain’s services previously couldn’t recommend him strongly enough. Iain took on the case and he never gives up, he’s professional and polite, always at the end of the phone to help, he was a real gentleman and a game changer, he took these guys on and got me the result i wanted. Thank you so much Iain.
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Contact the Expert Police Misconduct Solicitor
Iain Gould is a solicitor specialising in complaints, claims and civil actions against the Police. With over 30 years of experience and a national reputation, he has successfully sued all 43 police forces in England and Wales challenging abuse of power and securing rightful compensation.
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