Most of those years were spent attempting to get the verdict quashed: "My first appeal was a sham. My trial lawyers never made enquiries with regard to the forensic position, and my barrister's view was that we needed to pull apart the identification evidence but they didn't understand the ID parade was of limited nature due to its tainted nature."

It left him in a difficult position legally. The first appeal judges had said they were happy with the ID evidence, and "we thought the information by the police, that forensic evidence in the case was inconclusive, was the truth."

And so Nealon made an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1998. He believes the police lied to the CCRC: "They said investigations had been carried out – they repeated their statements to the court." When Nealon's team told the CCRC another look at the forensic evidence could lead to a reversal, "they said I was speculating and they were satisfied there were investigations done, for 12 years. At the end of 2010, when our own independent experts did an investigation, we revealed all of that was impugned. The CCRC apologised. Then they referred my case back to the court of appeal. I got there in 2013, whereupon my conviction was quashed."

Nealon wants to find out which officers gave the CCRC its evidence and take civil litigation. "We have strong evidence against the CCRC for incompetence and systemic management failings." Nealon has made a submission of evidence to the House of Commons justice committee about the CCRC and his case. He may be asked to give evidence to the committee.

There's another element about the police's behaviour that Nealon's team is questioning.

"When our forensic investigation got underway, the police then disclosed to the CCRC that the police file had gone missing. Significantly, it hadn't gone missing for 15 years prior to that, but it did as soon as the police were informed we were conducting investigations of our own. It's no surprise to find out the CCRC didn't ask how, where, and when. So this is an area we're going to impugn to parliament. Our forensic investigations began in 2010. Up until then the police didn't disclose to the CPS or defence that it had gone missing. Our accusation is that the police knew the state of affairs, hadn't done their investigations and that's why they got rid of the file."

Nealon's appeal solicitor, Mark Newby, says: "This case is as bad as it gets. My client was targeted by the police due to the fact that he had previous convictions and not due to any evidence linking him at all to the crime. The police arguably crossed the line in how they built a case against Victor Nealon, the CPS closed its eyes to the alarm bells that should have been ringing, and his original legal team were negligent in their lack of action. Even when it all went wrong, the CCRC failed repeatedly to act with the consequence that Victor Nealon spent 17 years in custody for a crime which the evidence suggest someone else was responsible for."

When Nealon was finally released in December last year, "I was given £46 and a rail ticket." He went to visit a friend he'd made in prison, Sion Jenkins, who was formally cleared in 2006 of killing his teenage foster daughter. "I got on extremely well with him, we became close friends in prison," Nealon says. "We were fighting our cases together. We remained in contact. He understood my case against the state. I needed to turn to somebody that knew me. He was the man." But when he got to there, Jenkins wasn't in. "I had one friend, who said I couldn't stay because he had elderly in-laws. I was homeless. I used the £46 for bed and breakfast; the next morning BBC journalists gave me accommodation in a cheap hotel if I agreed to be interviewed. I gave two or three interviews. I was sheltered for a week, then ... the MP John Hemming was of assistance."

Nealon looks around the room. He says: "I've been here eight months. I'm now under pressure to vacate. I have to go. I have an application with the city council. They're investigating my medical condition and financial position. They're trying to do something. I have to pay my landlord £60 out of my own Employment Support Allowance. The council don't pay that – they give me a relatively high allowance, but I have bills and am living below the poverty line."

Now he's trying to win compensation from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), but the government department is fighting it:

"The MoJ – we made an application for compensation and were rejected, not once but twice. Significantly, the MoJ is seeking to go behind the Court of Appeal's reasoning, to pull it apart and use the Crown's argument that the DNA might be [there because of] innocent transfer."

As Nealon points out, this reasoning has already been rejected in the Court of Appeal: "The prosecutor tried to throw mud hoping it would stick somewhere, and the Court of Appeal rejected it. Quite aside from that nonsense, one would think if I'm not legally able to prove my innocence I should be in prison." He says the MoJ went to the CPS, asking why it hadn't sought a retrial, but that it won't now disclose what the CPS said, which he claims is a breach of procedure.