Bichard

In the wake of the 2002 murders of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, the nation was horrified to learn that the killer, Ian Huntley, had a prolific history of alleged sexual violence. Between 1995 and 1999, Huntley had been linked to 11 separate police incidents—including allegations of rape and indecent assault on minors—none of which had resulted in a conviction but all of which were known to Humberside Police.

The Bichard Inquiry, launched the day after Huntley’s conviction in 2003, exposed a "Catastrophic Failure of Information Management." Sir Michael Bichard found that Humberside Police had not only failed to link the various allegations against Huntley but had actively deleted many of the records under a misinterpreted understanding of the Data Protection Act. When Huntley applied for the role at Soham Village College, the background checks only covered his (lack of) criminal convictions, failing to surface the vast amount of police "soft intelligence" that would have identified him as a high-risk individual.

The report also criticised the "Fragmented Vetting Landscape." Each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales operated its own separate IT systems, and there was no effective way for a school in Cambridgeshire to see intelligence held in Humberside. Furthermore, the inquiry noted a "culture of complacency" in school recruitment, where open references were accepted and gaps in employment history were frequently overlooked. The legacy of the report was a total paradigm shift in UK safeguarding: moving from a "conviction-based" check to an "intelligence-led" vetting system.