After reading our case update on Stewart & Green, one of our readers contacted the editor and brought an important, but unreported, judgment to our attention.

Members of the Serjeants’ Inn Police Team write a monthly Legal Update for Police Professional. By agreement with the editors, the UK Police Law Blog will bring you our Team’s Police Professional articles one month after they appear in print.

In this article, published on 13 September 2012, John Beggs QC and James Berry analyse the Court of Appeal’s decision in Salter v Chief Constable of Dorset [2012] EWCA Civ 1047 which contains important guidance on the approach that police misconduct panels and the PAT should take to sanction (or “outcome”) in cases of dishonesty. John and James appeared for the Chief Constable of Dorset in the Court of Appeal and in the Administrative Court in what was the first successful judicial review challenge to a decision of the PAT.

Our cut off date for police-related legal developments on the UK Police Law Blog was 1 August 2012. This decision was handed down on 1 August 2012 (and it has been a quiet summer / early autumn since then).

In R (Chief Constable of the Derbyshire Constabulary) v Police Appeals Tribunal & Green & Stewart [2012] EWHC 2280 (Admin) it was established that:

• A Regulation 21 Notice should set out which of the Standards of Professional Behaviour the officer is alleged to have breached
• A misconduct panel can consider Standards other than those specified in the Regulation 21 Notice if appropriate procedural safeguards are put in place (eg. adjournments so that the officer can consider the new allegations)
• The PAT’s power under Rule 4(4)(a) of the PAT Rules 2008 is limited to a review of the misconduct panel’s findings. The PAT does not conduct a rehearing. While not strictly a Wednesbury review, the appellant must establish that the misconduct panel’s findings were “unreasonable”