Red Flags

British Transport Police is a specialist national force policing the rail network. It is inspected under a seven-area ministerial commission set in 2021, not the 43-force PEEL framework. The grades shown below come from that commissioned review, published 22 February 2024, and are not directly comparable to territorial force grades.

BTP investigated a series of sexual assaults committed by Simon Levy on the London Underground. He was arrested in November 2024 over assaults reported the previous month, bailed to return in January 2025, and that bail was extended twice until May 2025. On 5 February 2026 he was convicted of eleven sexual assaults committed between April 2022 and May 2025, six of them in the first five months of 2025. In June 2026 he received an extended sentence of nine years, six in custody and three on extended licence. Reporting restrictions kept the outcome out of the public domain until the Old Bailey verdict on 7 August 2026.

Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo was murdered in March 2025, during the period Levy was on police bail in the BTP investigation. Sheryl Wilkins was murdered in August 2025, during the period he was on court bail in the same proceedings. The sentencing judge recorded the court bail as an aggravating feature.

The force has acknowledged that its initial investigation was not carried out at a fast enough pace, that opportunities to expedite it were missed, and that linked offences were not prioritised effectively. It says it has amended its procedures. An identification parade was not organised until April 2025, five months after the November 2024 arrest, a period spanning both the January rape and the March murder.

BTP made a voluntary conduct referral to the IOPC on 12 August 2026, the day Levy was sentenced. The IOPC opened an independent investigation into the conduct of two BTP detectives over alleged failures to progress or supervise the investigation into two reported sexual assaults on the London Underground in October 2024, and announced it on 18 August 2026. Before the referral was made the force had returned the initial investigating officer to uniformed duties and given the supervising detective sergeant advice and guidance in a non-investigative role. No outcome has been published and no officers are named here.

The IOPC has described the scope as alleged failures to progress or supervise that investigation. Whether the bail decisions fall within it has not been stated.

HMICFRS issued Derbyshire an accelerated cause of concern in April 2026 following a National Child Protection Inspection. The initial response was inadequate in 27 of 48 case files audited. Children were left at risk because additional safeguarding measures were not considered, with long delays in officers attending incidents. The constabulary was required to produce a detailed improvement plan within 28 days.

An accelerated cause of concern is issued when failures raise immediate public safety concerns. It is more serious than a standard cause of concern, which would wait for the full PEEL report. Note: the April 2026 NCPI accelerated CoC sits outside the PEEL cycle shown live below and so does not appear in the panel.

Inspectors found investigation plans followed in only 41 of 51 cases reviewed. Investigative opportunities not taken in 66 of 85 investigations. Only 61 of 81 investigations examined were considered effective. DA risk assessments too often not dealt with appropriately. No progress on managing medium-risk DA cases.

The Essex PCC explicitly cited chronic underfunding as a structural cause of the protecting-vulnerable-people finding; Essex is the third lowest funded force per head of population in England and Wales. The force is monitored in the VNS super-complaint tracker given its action plan commitments on stalking response.

GMP's inclusion here is not based on its current PEEL grades, which represent significant improvement from its earlier special measures period (the live panel below shows the current picture, including a 2022-cycle cause of concern on responding to the public that remains technically open even as the pillar itself has improved). It is based on the Dame Vera Baird inquiry published July 2024, which documented a specific case of institutional DARVO in GMP custody.

The inquiry documented Maria, a domestic abuse victim whose partner had been detained by GMP for abusing her. She went to Pendleton police station to collect keys and money from him, but was left outside for six hours, calling police 14 times for help while officers inside ignored her despite knowing she was a domestic abuse victim. When she swore at officers out of frustration she was arrested, and was subsequently strip searched on the basis that officers believed she might be concealing a vape. Dame Vera described this as "obviously wrong, in every way you can dream of." GMP accepted the inquiry's findings.

Inspectors identified gaps in safeguarding oversight, senior leaders unaware of issues, and incorrect rape crime recording in the 2025–27 cycle.

Humberside also published a stalking super-complaint response (a PDF recommendation-tracker linked from its website). We have not transcribed the substantive content of that tracker here, so we make no specific claim about what was committed against what HMICFRS subsequently found - only that both documents exist in the same period.

The force was placed in HMICFRS's Engage enhanced monitoring in June 2022 and removed in January 2025 after improvements to call handling, child exploitation investigations, professional standards and property management.

On areas directly relevant to VNS: lessons learned from domestic homicide and child safeguarding reviews were not understood by frontline officers. Use of preventative orders was inconsistent; outside DA teams, knowledge of protective orders is low and policing of orders is not monitored except for stalking orders.

The Baroness Casey Review (March 2023) found the Met institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic. The Angiolini Inquiry (Part 1 February 2024; Part 2 December 2025) documented systemic vetting failures that allowed Wayne Couzens to remain in post despite prior reports of sexual offending. Part 2 found a quarter of forces still lack basic sexual offence policies and that Angiolini's recommendation to bar anyone with sexual offence convictions from policing remained unimplemented as of December 2025.

Simon Levy was convicted at the Old Bailey on 7 August 2026 of two murders, two rapes, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and intentional suffocation. On 12 August 2026 the Recorder of London, His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC, sentenced him to a whole life order. Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo was murdered in March 2025 and Sheryl Wilkins in August 2025. A third woman, who has lifetime anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, was raped and strangled to unconsciousness in January 2025.

The sentencing remarks record two aggravating features that bear directly on how Levy was being managed. The murder of Sheryl Wilkins was committed while he was on court bail for sexual offences on public transport. It was also committed after he had been interviewed about the murder of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo and released under investigation.

The remarks also record that on 25 January 2025 the surviving victim reported the rape to officers while she was herself being arrested for an unrelated matter. She described her attacker and where he lived, and that description was captured on body worn video. The judge stated it is obvious she was referring to Levy. She was too unwell to give a detailed account at the time and gave a full account on 6 September 2025. Both murders took place between those two dates.

The Met has acknowledged failures in its management of Levy as a registered sex offender. Reporting by the Telegraph states the force lowered his risk level from high to medium in 2024 after he was blinded in one eye in an assault. VNS has not seen the underlying record and states this as reported rather than established.

The force made a voluntary conduct referral to the IOPC in January 2026, concerning the management of Levy by two officers following his release from prison on licence in February 2023. The IOPC set a wider scope than the referral, running from his first conviction in September 2021 to his arrest in September 2025, and is examining whether action could or should have been taken to prevent his reoffending. A gross misconduct notice has been served on a police constable and a misconduct notice on a detective sergeant. The IOPC states that serving a conduct notice means an officer's actions are under investigation and does not mean disciplinary proceedings will follow. No outcome has been published and no officers are named here.

The Met and the Crown Prosecution Service have given incompatible accounts of the same hearings. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kevin Southworth attributes the failure to remand Levy to decisions at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in May and June 2025. The CPS has apologised for shortcomings in how remand was handled. No published mechanism reconciles the two accounts.

Since the case the Met has introduced refreshed training on intelligence sharing and an automated system that flags when more than one force needs to be aware of an offender as soon as that offender is charged. It has also deployed specialist officers across Haringey and Enfield. The automated cross-force flag addresses the aggregation failure directly. No evaluation has been published.

The pattern matches the West Midlands entry on this page. Information existed in fragments across separate systems and was never joined.

On 14 January 2023 a group of protesters attended Bethel Street Police Station in Norwich over the force's decision not to prosecute a man for an act of violence against an animal. Gemma Barnes was arrested and her body worn camera was seized. She and another protester were acquitted at Norwich Magistrates' Court in November 2023.

The camera was returned after the acquittal. Officers had failed to switch it off, and it contained more than four hours of audio recorded inside the station. The recordings include officers discussing what they described as unlawful stop and searches of Black women, remarks about a transgender protester, and conversations about paying for sexual services.

The complaint handling is what places Norfolk in this index. Barnes made a formal complaint after her acquittal, reference CO/53/23, covering 17 separate aspects. The Professional Standards Department concluded its investigation more than three years later. Three officers were dealt with by reflective practice and no disciplinary action was taken against any officer involved. In 2026 the IOPC recommended further investigation into aspects of the arrest, additional learning for officers, and an apology for delays in handling the complaint.

A separate civil claim arising from an earlier arrest was settled by the force. In February 2022 Barnes was arrested for allegedly breaching a court bail condition that Norwich Magistrates' Court had lifted weeks earlier. She was held in handcuffs and leg restraints and detained for nearly twelve hours. Her complaint about that arrest was initially rejected by the Professional Standards Department on the basis that the level of service was acceptable. After disclosure under the Civil Procedure Rules produced internal emails showing the force knew the condition had been withdrawn, Norfolk Constabulary settled the claim, paying £8,750 in damages for wrongful arrest plus legal costs.

Barnes is seeking judicial review of the IOPC's handling of her complaint and is bringing civil proceedings against Norfolk Constabulary alleging wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, assault and battery, and trespass to goods.

A petition to Chief Constable Paul Sanford calling for an independent review of the handling of CO/53/23, and a wider review of whether systemic failings exist in how the force investigates complaints against its officers, has passed 4,000 signatures.

Norfolk Constabulary says the recordings previously formed part of a conduct investigation covering 17 aspects of a single complaint, that a number of matters were dealt with through misconduct procedures, and that officers' arrest and stop and search records were reviewed without finding wider evidence of discriminatory behaviour. The force says newly circulated material is being reviewed and that some of the content falls short of what the public would expect.

This entry rests on published reporting, the complainant's own published account, and the force's public statements rather than on an HMICFRS inspection finding. VNS has not seen the Professional Standards outcome letter or the IOPC decision. No individual officers are named here.

Failures were particularly apparent in rape, robbery and violence with injury. CID and DA teams were found to be under-resourced and dealing with large caseloads including serious and complex crimes. PCC Danielle Stone asked for a verbal briefing and full action plan with clear timescales.

Inspectors flagged that Northumbria needs to follow national guidelines under Clare's Law when making disclosures: compliance with the national scheme was not consistent. (This sits in the narrative findings rather than as a formal pillar grade or cause of concern, so it does not appear in the live panel below.)

The 2025-27 inspection graded Staffordshire inadequate at responding to the public, with a formal cause of concern. The same area was flagged as requiring improvement in September 2024; the force did not make sufficient progress, and the grade fell.

The finding most relevant to VNS's evidence base: incidents initially graded as priority were often downgraded later without sufficient risk assessment or supervisory oversight. In many of the cases reviewed, the circumstances reported by the caller had not changed. The decision to delay attendance appeared to assume that risk reduces with the passing of time. Some of these incidents involved vulnerable domestic abuse victims, and opportunities to safeguard them were missed.

The force's callback system often delays callbacks by several hours and then cannot always establish contact, leaving some callers reporting crimes without a response and without the potential risk being understood or documented. Three recommendations were issued with a six-month deadline.

Suffolk received the first accelerated cause of concern specifically for Clare's Law failure in May 2026. HMICFRS found a backlog of over 500 outstanding applications, including one submitted in January 2025. The force was leaving identifiable digital records of police contact on victims' devices, actively increasing risk. The backlog had been logged on the constabulary's own risk register and classed as tolerated, which HMICFRS found allowed it to continue with insufficient scrutiny or mitigation.

The PEEL 2025-27 report published 20 August 2026 graded the constabulary inadequate in two areas, safeguarding children and adults at risk of harm, and providing a safe and lawful custody environment, with a further cause of concern issued in each. Only one of nine areas was graded good.

On safeguarding, inspectors found no secondary review process for standard-risk domestic abuse cases, an area for improvement first raised in the 2023-25 inspection and not resolved. In the year ending 31 January 2026 the constabulary recorded 616 domestic abuse cases as high risk, of which 258 were later downgraded, a rate of 41.9 percent. The constabulary had not scrutinised that data to establish whether the downgrades were appropriate, and inspectors found cases downgraded from high risk and then passed to investigators without the accreditation to handle them. Four recommendations were issued with a three-month deadline.

On custody, inspectors found the written handover process between shifts insufficient and that it increased risk to detainees and personnel. The constabulary responded during the inspection by introducing a video recording of the outgoing officer reading out the written handover, which inspectors found still does not allow in-person clarification or risk discussion. Inspectors saw risk information missed during handover, told senior leaders during the inspection itself, and recorded that the immediate risk had not been sufficiently mitigated and still remains.

The finding most directly relevant to VNS's evidence base concerns crime recording. In the quality service review inspectors examined 25 antisocial behaviour personal cases and found 16 recorded correctly. Seven harassment crimes had not been recorded at all. A harassment crime that is never recorded cannot be investigated, cannot be aggregated into a pattern, and does not exist in any subsequent account of what was reported.

Inspectors also found the constabulary under-recorded its use of force, recording 4,784 incidents in the year ending 31 March 2025 against an estimated 10,693. This is a deterioration on the previous year, when the estimated shortfall was 4,266.

The charge rate for victim-based crime fell from 15.6% in 2015 to 6.6% in 2022. The force applies just 1.1 DVPOs per 1,000 domestic abuse crimes against a national average of 11.4. On stalking protection orders the picture is mixed: 12 SPOs granted in the year to September 2022, up from one the previous year. Some improvement on SPOs, persistent under-use of DVPOs.

A cause of concern on emergency and non-emergency call answering, issued in the 2023-25 inspection, was closed in the 2025-27 report following improvement.

Inspectors identified a significant backlog of crime investigations, some cases had been waiting six months, with supervisors attempting to cancel or strike off up to 50 crimes per month. This pattern of closing cases prematurely under workload pressure is directly relevant to VNS's evidence base on how victims' cases are deprioritised.

Surrey's previous PEEL inspection had a cause of concern for call handling and response times which has since been lifted; charge rates for stalking and rape have doubled since the 2023 inspection.

Raneem Oudeh, 22, and her mother Khaola Saleem, 49, were stabbed to death outside Khaola Saleem's home in Solihull in the early hours of 27 August 2018. Raneem Oudeh's estranged husband Janbaz Tarin pleaded guilty to both murders and was sentenced in December 2018 to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 32 years.

The IOPC identified ten domestic abuse incidents concerning Tarin reported to West Midlands Police between April and August 2018. On the night of 26 and 27 August 2018 Raneem Oudeh made repeated 999 calls after Tarin assaulted her at a restaurant and followed her and her mother home. Officers did not arrive before the attack. She was on the phone to police when she was killed.

An inquest before senior coroner Louise Hunt at Birmingham and Solihull Coroner's Court concluded in November 2022 after three weeks of evidence. The eleven-member jury returned a narrative conclusion of unlawful killing. It found that failures to respond to incidents between April and August 2018 materially contributed to both deaths, and separately that failures to respond to the repeat 999 calls on the night of 26 and 27 August 2018 materially contributed to the murders. The jury identified failures to record or investigate crimes, failures to arrest, downgrading of risk, and gaps in training and understanding of the force's own domestic abuse policy. West Midlands Police apologised to the family.

The finding most relevant to VNS's evidence base is that the information already existed. Ten recorded incidents across five months were dealt with as separate events rather than as a pattern of escalating risk. This is a recording and aggregation failure rather than an absence of evidence.

Raneem's Law, a Home Office funded programme placing independent domestic abuse specialists inside police control rooms, was established in response. West Midlands was one of five pilot forces from March 2025 and the programme was extended to a further twelve forces in June 2026, with a stated commitment to all forces by 2029. It is a funded programme rather than legislation, although the force's own published material has described it as legislation. Specialists in West Midlands had reviewed over 7,700 domestic abuse related calls by July 2026. No outcome data has been published.

Reported figures vary by counting basis. The IOPC gives ten domestic abuse incidents in the April to August 2018 window. Inquest evidence covered seven separate police call-outs to the address. Home Office and force material published for Raneem's Law refers to thirteen reports raising concerns for Raneem Oudeh's safety. Accounts of the number of 999 calls on the final night also differ across sources. This entry uses the IOPC figure, which is attributable to a named investigation with a stated window. No individual officers are named here.

Inspectors found cases being closed despite potential lines of inquiry remaining. Over 900 crimes were unallocated in district queues in September 2025, some dating back to May. 412 rape finalisations or reclassifications were waiting for review by the force crime registrar, the oldest from December 2024.

Inspectors found Wiltshire does not yet have a clear and proactive system to monitor protective orders or breaches. The force still relies heavily on victims to report breaches themselves. At the end of November 2025, 217 domestic abuse cases were waiting for a secondary risk assessment, delaying referrals to safeguarding partners.

Wiltshire was placed in special measures in 2022 and removed from Engage in May 2024 after sustained progress. The protective orders and risk assessment findings are the specific areas of concern relevant to VNS's evidence base.

The IOPC received 94,940 complaints in 2024/25, a record high, up 11% on the previous year. Review applications from victims dissatisfied with force handling were up 14%, and 30% of IOPC reviews found force handling unreasonable. Despite rising demand, the IOPC faces a 34% real-terms budget cut since 2011. The combination of record complaints and falling resources creates structural pressure on the body whose function is to hold police accountable.

HMICFRS is the statutory inspectorate for policing in England and Wales. Its PEEL inspections, thematic inspections and accelerated causes of concern are the primary mechanisms by which force failures are formally documented. VNS relies extensively on HMICFRS findings as primary sources.

A recurring concern in HMICFRS's own reporting is that forces repeatedly fail to implement recommendations from previous inspection cycles. The inspectorate has noted this pattern explicitly: failures identified in one cycle reappear in the next. Recommendation compliance is monitored through HMICFRS's online portal but enforcement mechanisms remain limited.

The College of Policing is the professional body for policing, responsible for Authorised Professional Practice (APP), the operational guidelines all forces are expected to follow. Following the stalking super-complaint, the College committed to updating the stalking and harassment APP. That update remains in progress. The College has also published updated Clare's Law principles, but as Northumbria's finding shows, compliance with national guidelines is not universal.

The CPS makes charging decisions in the most serious cases. The charge rate for recorded rape has fallen from 7.5% in 2016–17 to 3.1% in 2024, despite more victims coming forward. The CPS's assessment of the realistic prospect of conviction, and its assessment of complainant credibility, are primary drivers of attrition. Operation Soteria has increased referrals from police, but CPS charging decisions have not kept pace. Stalking charging rates are similarly inconsistent across CPS areas.