Pinnock v Independent Office for Police Conduct: High Court quashes appeal decision on unexamined harassment complaint

The High Court has partly quashed a police watchdog's decision on a woman's complaints against Metropolitan Police officers, holding that it wrongly refused to consider an allegation of harassment that it had earlier found to be a complaint.

In Pinnock v Independent Office for Police Conduct [2026] EWHC 2572 (Admin), Robert Palmer KC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, rejected most of the challenge but allowed the grounds concerning alleged past harassment at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

Alison Pinnock was arrested in September 2015 on suspicion of robbery, by West Midlands Police at the Metropolitan Police's request, following a complaint by an insurance investigator. A battery charge was later dismissed. In her police interview she said she had earlier been harassed by officers at the NMC's London offices in 2013 to 2014, and she later complained that the arrest formed part of a course of harassment aimed at disrupting her work as a McKenzie friend.

The IOPC decided in 2021 that her interview remarks should have been explored as a complaint, and directed the force to investigate. The force's heads of complaint did not expressly mention the NMC, however, and in February 2025 the IOPC rejected her appeal against the dismissal of her complaints, saying the NMC allegation was not part of the complaint and could not be addressed on appeal.

The desktop review

Ground 1 failed. The claimant argued that the IOPC should have remitted the matter for proper investigation rather than conducting its own desktop review of material the force had not considered. The judge held that paragraph 25(8) of Schedule 3 to the Police Reform Act 2002 permitted the IOPC to review findings without further investigation. The material added nothing on the arrest. Her contention that police were not justified in seeking her arrest was untenable.

The NMC complaint

Grounds 4 and 6 succeeded. The NMC remarks had no bearing on the 2015 allegation, but remained a serious allegation in their own right. The IOPC's 2025 conclusion that the allegation was not part of the complaint was irreconcilable with its 2021 decision.

The claimant's failure to identify the incidents precisely did not relieve the force of the obligation to find out what she meant. Nor did the rejection of her harassment claim over the arrest dispose of the allegation. A complaint under the 2002 Act does not require a course of conduct within the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the judge said, and the word might describe conduct within section 26 of the Equality Act 2010 or simply behaviour the complainant found objectionable.

Section 31(2A) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 did not bar relief. Applying Hippolyte and Bradbury, the judge could not find it highly likely that the outcome would not have been substantially different. Proper consideration would at least have meant upholding the appeal to that extent, and the court could not predict the result. Limited records disclosed during the claim were no substitute for an investigation.

The decision is quashed to the extent that the IOPC found it had no power to investigate the NMC complaint, and it must reconsider the appeal on that point. Its conclusions on the 2015 arrest stand, since no outcome of the NMC investigation could affect the decision to arrest.

Ms Pinnock appeared in person. Danny Simpson, in-house solicitor, appeared for the IOPC. The interested police forces did not appear.