The report clearing Britain’s most senior police officer of misconduct is the third decision in quick succession that has severely undermined bereaved Hillsborough families’ confidence in the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The watchdog has for years been subject to criticism from complainants, lawyers and politicians that it lacks adequate independence and backbone to hold police to account for wrongdoing, and its credibility is seen by some to depend on the outcome of its Hillsborough investigations.

The IPCC, which the government has already committed to overhauling and renaming, has spent four years investigating the South Yorkshire police failures that caused the 96 deaths at Hillsborough in 1989, the failure of that force afterwards to take responsibility and its attempts instead to blame the victims, and the alleged collusion of West Midlands police, the force appointed in 1989 to investigate.

Rachel Cerfontyne, the deputy chair of the IPCC and commissioner with responsibility for the Hillsborough investigations, has said the total cost is likely to be about £80m. She and senior investigators hold regular meetings with the bereaved families and give public monthly updates. Cerfontyne has emphasised the seriousness and dedication with which the IPCC has approached its task.

Yet Pete Weatherby QC, the lead lawyer who represented 22 families at the new inquests that found the 96 people were unlawfully killed due to South Yorkshire police failures at Hillsborough, says confidence in the IPCC is now at zero.

Weatherby accuses the IPCC of repeatedly finding reasons not to pursue disciplinary cases against police officers, and says his experience and those of the families he represents have led them to conclude it is not fit for purpose.

The report clearing the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, follows the rejection a fortnight ago of a complaint by Hayley Court, a former South Yorkshire police media officer. There had been claims she was given unethical instructions to spin coverage of the new inquests.

That development came after the decision that has most damaged the faith of the families in the IPCC: the clearing of David Crompton, the South Yorkshire police chief constable during the new inquests, of seeking to improperly maintain the force’s original stance of blaming the victims for the disaster.

The families had complained to the IPCC that despite Crompton having issued a full apology in 2012, he did not maintain that stance at the inquests. Instead, the South Yorkshire police barrister, Fiona Barton QC, highlighted alleged misbehaviour by supporters, remained silent when other police lawyers and witnesses were making similar claims, and argued forcefully against the apology being made known to the inquests jury.

The coroner, Sir John Goldring, accepted her argument and did not require the force’s series of previous apologies and legal admissions for its failures to be put before the jury.

The families complained that this stance at the inquests, which began in 2014, subjected them to a traumatic re-run of the discredited police lies and lengthened the proceedings to two years, the longest case ever heard by a British jury.



However, the IPCC, with Cerfontyne herself as the commissioner, found there were no grounds for a misconduct charge against Crompton, concluding that the force did not advance “a particular scenario” at the inquests and that Barton’s questions alleging misbehaviour by supporters were “not part of a deliberate, predetermined strategy”. That decision was upheld last month in a review by Hugh Tomlinson QC.

The report on Hayley Court’s experience of working as South Yorkshire police’s media officer at the inquests failed to examine all the relevant evidence. It set itself terms of reference that excluded Court’s claim that she had been bullied in the job, which the force had not upheld.

Within Court’s personnel documents, as revealed by the Guardian in May, was an official view that she had failed to “proactively redress” what the force considered to be “obvious imbalance in media reporting” of the inquests.

However, the IPCC report did not cite this document or investigate what “imbalance” the force believed had been portrayed in the media. Instead, the report listed a series of meetings in which other people disputed Court’s account, and it concluded that she had “misunderstood” her instructions.

The report also recited extensive alleged criticism of Court and her abilities, including from South Yorkshire police’s barrister, which could seem almost designed to deter future complainants and whistleblowers within the police from ever coming forward. Court, who now has a media relations role outside of the police service, issued a statement saying the report was “manifestly wrong” and that she was very disappointed in the IPCC.

Files are due to be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service imminently on the full criminal investigations into the deaths at Hillsborough and subsequent alleged perjury, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office by police officers.

Along with all those terribly serious questions about the most devastating and far-reaching police failures is a very pressing one about the competence of the IPCC itself to do a proper job.