Andy Coles accused of deceiving political activist into forming a sexual relationship while he was an undercover officer

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A deputy police and crime commissioner has resigned after being accused of deceiving a woman into a sexual relationship while he was an undercover officer.

Andy Coles, the deputy police and crime commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, stepped down three days after his past as an undercover officer infiltrating political groups was revealed.

On Friday, he was accused of deceiving a 19-year-old activist into forming a sexual relationship while he was working undercoverin the 1990s.

The Guardian disclosed that the woman, known only as “Jessica”, is taking legal action against the police, alleging that Coles groomed and manipulated her.

In a statement on Monday, Coles said: “There have been news reports over the weekend about which I am unable to comment. This coverage is significantly impacting on my ability to carry out my duties as deputy police and crime commissioner.

“I have therefore today tendered my resignation with immediate effect, which [the] police and crime commissioner, Jason Ablewhite, has accepted.”

He disclosed that the allegations have been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to be investigated.

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Jessica, who had called for his resignation, said on Monday: “I am relieved. He has done the right thing.



“This is just the start of what is going to be a long legal process to try and get some answers from both him and his superiors.”

Coles’ past as an undercover spy had been revealed following an apparent indiscretion by his younger brother, the broadcaster and former pop star Richard Coles, who referred in passing to his brother’s covert work in his autobiography published three years ago.

A member of the public spotted the significance of the brief remark in the book recently and tipped off campaigners at the Undercover Research Group, a network of activists scrutinising the deployment of police spies.

Investigations by the group and the Guardian had revealed how Coles adopted a fake identity and infiltrated animal rights groups between 1991 and 1995.

He had pretended to be “Andy Davey”, a removal van driver living in a south London bedsit. Richard Coles described in his autobiography how his brother had “looked like he had just walked out of the woods, his hair long and shaggy, with a straggly beard, his ears rattling with piercings”.

Jessica has told how she met “Davey” in 1992 after she had joined the animal rights movement as a “naive, idealistic, unsophisticated and a very young 19”.

She said he became her first boyfriend and alleged that during their relationship of more than a year he concealed from her his real job as a police officer and his marriage to another woman.

She has said that she would not have consented to the relationship if she had known he was a police spy. At the time he was 32, although she says she thought he was about 24.

She has said: “Although not legally underage, I feel that my youth and vulnerability were used to target me. I was groomed by someone much older, and far more experienced, and I was manipulated into having a sexual relationship with him. I didn’t even know his real name.”

Coles had been a member of a Metropolitan police undercover unit, the special demonstration squad, which spent four decades monitoring hundreds of political groups.

The Met has been forced to apologise and pay compensation to at least nine women who have discovered that they were deceived into long-term relationships by undercover officers. The Met has admitted that the relationships “were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong”.

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Police chiefs have insisted that the undercover officers were not allowed, under any circumstances, to sleep with people they were spying on.

Coles left the Met in 2012 and became a Conservative councillor in Peterborough. Last year, Ablewhite, the police and crime commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, appointed Coles as his deputy.

On Monday, Ablewhite said he could not comment further as the allegations had been referred to the IPCC.

Dave Baigent, Cambridge city council’s representative on the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough police and crime panel, said it was right that the allegations had been referred to the IPCC.