MPS wins legal challenge over vetting decisions
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has won a legal challenge to allow all misconduct allegations to be considered during vetting for police officers.
The judgment follows an appeal by the MPS on an important point of law after losing a High Court judicial review in February 2025. The judicial review challenged Operation Assure, the MPS’s then process to consider dismissing officers who could no longer pass vetting.
The High Court ruled that previous unproven misconduct allegations would not usually be a basis for a vetting decision save in exceptional cases. The MPS appealed on the grounds that forces must have greater discretion to consider all vetting risks presented by an officer’s past behaviour, including alleged behaviour, to protect the public and colleagues.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said: “Today’s judgment by the Court of Appeal is a welcome and important step in our drive for the highest of standards across policing and to root out those not fit to serve.
“It is a judgment that will be welcomed as common sense by the public who must have faith our officers do not have a back catalogue of alarming allegations. It will be welcomed by the tens of thousands of good officers we have in the Met who care deeply about the safety of the public and their colleagues.
“The High Court judicial review was brought by a Met officer unhappy at his vetting removal and imminent dismissal for three unproven allegations of rape plus more allegations about his conduct towards women. While every individual has the right to bring a judicial review, I remain surprised the Met Police Federation funded his legal action, using subscription fees of their members. It is hard to believe their female members backed the use of their funds to keep an alleged rapist in the Met.
“We will continue our work, alongside policing nationally, to sack those who corrupt our integrity, with confidence the legal system has supported us.”
The judgment says that vetting decisions require an evaluation of risk about what may happen in the future and that “no particular event need be proved to have happened at all”. Those making vetting decisions need to be able to consider all available information relating to an individual.
It complements and reinforces new vetting regulations introduced by the Home Office in May to close gaps in the law and ensure officers who lose their vetting after a fair process also automatically lose their jobs.
The MPS said it continues work under this new process to review the vetting of those identified through Operation Assure, as well as deal with any new cases.
The full judgment is published here – Lino Di Maria, R (on the application of) v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis – Find Case Law – The National Archives