Nottinghamshire Police made a formal complaint to the press regulator about our coverage
14:18, 20 Mar 2026Updated 18:08, 20 Mar 2026
Chief Constable Kate Meynell leaves Mary Ward House after giving evidence to the public inquiry on Friday, March 20
Nottinghamshire Police’s outgoing Chief Constable has admitted it was a “mistake” to complain to a regulator about Nottinghamshire Live’s coverage of the Nottingham attacks.
Kate Meynell, who is retiring after taking part in the statutory public inquiry into Valdo Calocane’s horrific June 2023 killings, said she “shouldn’t have done it” when asked about the police’s complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation in May 2024.
Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates were all brutally stabbed by Calocane and the paranoid schizophrenic is now in a hospital indefinitely.
Journalists from several outlets were invited to a briefing with Nottinghamshire Police in February 2024 and before attending, media were asked to confirm in writing that the briefing would be “non-disclosable”.
The briefing, which Chief Constable Meynell took part in, contained previously unknown details about the extent of Calocane’s interaction with Nottinghamshire Police in the years before the June 2023 killings.
Given the strong public interest in such details, Nottinghamshire Live reported them and also reported the fact that we had been made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
It was this reporting that led to Nottinghamshire Police’s IPSO complaint – which the regulator then threw out.
The issue of the briefing came up as Chief Constable Meynell gave evidence on Friday (March 20) to the Nottingham Inquiry, examining the response to Calocane’s killings and whether they could have been stopped.
Rachel Langdale KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked: “Making complaints about that in those circumstances, do you think that was justified?”
“I think making that complaint was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it,” Chief Constable Meynell said.
Natalie Fahy, Editor of Nottinghamshire Live, said: “Nottinghamshire Police tried to stop us reporting matters of public interest and when it didn’t go the way they wanted it to, they reported us to our regulator.
“Thankfully, IPSO saw sense and threw their complaint out. For the Chief Constable to say now that this was a mistake is quite frankly pathetic.
“Instead of trying to protect their reputation, the force and Chief Constable should have been communicating properly with the people who really matter here – the families of the victims and the survivors of those horrific attacks.”
Chief Constable Meynell apologised earlier in her evidence for not telling the families of Calocane’s victims that the media briefing was being held.
The media briefing at the time also touched on details about the misconduct hearing for PC Matthew Gell, one of the officers who accessed files about the Nottingham attacks, even though he was not involved in the investigation.
PC Gell, who was issued a final written warning over his misconduct, shared details about the attacks to people outside the force, including to a WhatsApp group for Nottinghamshire Police officers that Kate Meynell’s son was in.
The police boss said at Friday’s hearing: “I fully accept now that it was not the right thing to do and it achieved exactly the opposite of what I intended to and I understand why that is the case and I am really disappointed in myself that this happened.”
Ms Langdale asked, in relation to the contents of the non-disclosable briefing: “It’s a bold assertion isn’t it to say ‘I haven’t found any other concerns in relation to other members of that WhatsApp group’ and arguably a conflict when your own child is one of the people on that group?”
The police boss added: “My whole motivation to do this was to try to provide more information, was to try and be more transparent.
“I do accept now that the areas that I’ve identified in my statement and what you’re raising with me, there could be the perception that it wasn’t transparent and I apologise for that. It wasn’t my intention. I was trying to do the right thing and it went terribly wrong.”