Dear North Yorkshire Police,

In a publicly broadcast interview (see below weblink) the leader in the innocence campaign of Robin Garbutt stated that there had been two armed robberies at Melsonby Post Office, prior to the Garbutts taking occupation in April 2003.

https://neilwilby.com/2020/06/22/dr-trut...

Asked for specifics, the Garbutt campaigners have refused to provide any further details. A retired senior police officer, who was brought up in the same village, has no recollection of any such robberies. He left in 1987. Other enquiries, including searches of newspaper archives, have also drawn a blank.

Accordingly, by way of the Freedom of Information Act, please disclose the following:

In the periods (I) 1983 to 1993 (II) 1993 to 2003, the number of armed robberies recorded as taking place at Melsonby Post Office, Richmondshire.

For each of the robberies, please disclose:

(a) The value of cash and goods stolen (b) details of any injuries suffered by the occupants (c) the outcome of the subsequent police investigation as either (i) successful prosecution (ii) unsuccessful prosecution (iii) unsolved

A request in similar terms has been made to Post Office Limited.

Yours faithfully,

Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist

Twitter: @Neil_Wilby

Web: neilwilby.com

Dear North Yorkshire Police (NYP),

I am writing to request an internal review of North Yorkshire Police's handling of my FOI request 'Post Office Robberies'.

The grounds for complaint are:

1. You have, yet again, breached section 10 of the Act. The requirement is for a public authority is to respond PROMPTLY to an information request and, in any event, within 20 working days. A point not, apparently, grasped by Amie McNairn, the legal officer involved, so far, with this request.

2. You have breached section 17 of the Act.

3. To the extent that, in my respectful submission,

(i) the information is being deliberately withheld by NYP to avoid further reputational damage. The 'investigations' into two alleged robberies at Melsonby Post Office about which much is already known, occurring in 2009 and 2010, are most charitably described elsewhere as sub-optimal. As is the almost inevitable 'cover-up' that has followed - and is still extant 11 years later. Lisa Winward, the incumbent Chief Constable, has been adjacent to that 'cover-up' for a significant part of that timespan and, to this day, and in the applicant's certain knowledge, refuses to hand over the matter to a larger, metropolitan force for re-investigation.

(ii) the information is being deliberately withheld as part of a wider, and long-running, campaign of harassment, conducted by the chief constable (and her predecessor) and at least one other very senior officer against a journalist following his vocation. A simple reference to other requests made by this applicant to NYP, via the WhatDoTheyKnow website, lend significant weight to that assertion.

(iii) The proposition that information requests made to a public authority are applicant and motive blind is lost on NYP - and has been over the past 10 years, at the very least. They routinely play the man (or woman), not what is asked for. As a police force, no less, they simply do not understand it is about transparency, accountability, disclosure to the public and public interests. It is not about frustrating and harassing specified individuals, protecting private interests or pursuing either personal or force-wide vendettas against applicants. Particularly, if they form part of the fourth estate and routinely dig up evidence of ineptitude or wrongdoing by NYP and its senior officers.

All rights of remedy, either by way of section 77 of the Act, or by civil proceedings, are, accordingly and herewith, reserved.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...

Yours faithfully,

Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist

Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com

Dear Civil Disclosure,

Receipt of your communication of even date is acknowledged. The man (or woman) on the mythical Clapham omnibus might fairly observe that it would have been just as quick to make the requested disclosure as record the IRR.

Also, please compare and contrast with the information request made to Post Office Ltd (POL) on the same day.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

POL has responded to both the original request and a subsequent internal review during the time NYP, much better resourced and dealing with less requests, has done absolutely nothing.

This, taken at its face does rather support the proposition that disclosure is being deliberately withheld at the chief constable's behest.

Accordingly, I would respectfully request that it is taken into account by the officer undertaking the IRR for NYP, alongside a similar point already made therein.

Thank you

Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist

Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neiblwilby.com