The South Yorkshire police chief constable, David Crompton, is to challenge in court a decision by the force’s police and crime commissioner, Alan Billings, to remove him.
Billings, who says he has the backing of families of those who lost their lives at Hillsborough, has faced criticism from the chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Tom Winsor, who called his decision irrational.
The row focuses on a statement by Crompton a day after the conclusion of the inquest into the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans on April 15, 1989, in which he accepted criticisms levelled at the force but said the failures had to be put into the context of “other contributory factors”.
Some interpreted “other contributory factors” as meaning the behaviour of Liverpool fans, who were exonerated by the inquest jury, while Crompton and Winsor have said this was a reference to other parties involved, such as the ambulance service and local authority, who were also criticised.
Billings and Winsor argued from their respective positions on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, during which Winsor told Billings his decision was mistaken and would be overturned in the high court.
Billings said: “It’s not just me who read this statement in that way, the families read it in that way, the MPs read it in that way, local councillors read it in that way – on the day the statement was issued I was having phone calls and e-mails, someone actually came from Liverpool, one of the families, to see me on that day. They’re all reading in the way I read it.”
Winsor responded: “He’s mistaken and the high court will correct him. The context was fully understood and taken into consideration. But Dr Billings is not firing the chief constable for anything other than three words in a press release, which could not fairly mean anything other than he was not blaming the fans.”
Crompton was suspended in April, and on Thursday Billings called for the chief constable’s immediate resignation, saying the statement sought to justify questioning by the force’s legal team at the inquests “which touched on fan behaviour and caused the families distress”.
Crompton issued a statement through his lawyers, which said: “I believe the use of Section 38 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, by the police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, to be fundamentally wrong and I will shortly be commencing judicial review proceedings in the high court in order to challenge him.”
After the Hillsborough inquest verdicts in April, Crompton read out an apology outside his Sheffield HQ. The following day, the chief constable issued a second statement.
Billings said: “The chief constable’s statement sought to justify the questions asked at the inquests. This was something that I believed the public had already concluded was wrong.
“The second statement made clear that the chief constable simply could not or would not see that the conduct of his legal team had caused distress to the families and that trying to justify the questioning simply added to that.”
