APPENDIX 9
Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from
the Clerk to the North Yorkshire Police Authority
I refer to your faxed letter dated 7 July 1998
to the office of the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police,
a copy of which has been passed to me by the Assistant Chief Constable,
Paul Kernaghan.
I can confirm that the settlement agreement
referred to in your letter to the Chief Constable did contain
a confidentiality clause as to the level of payments. The confidentiality
clause was included in the agreement at the request of both parties.
As both the Association of Police Authorities
and ACPO have pointed out in their correspondence with the Committee,
cases of this sort are both rare and complex. The reasons for
seeking a confidentiality clause in this case related specifically
to the facts of the case, in that the Authority settled because
it accepted that Ms Ashurst's health had suffered and that further
damage might be caused by a public airing of the issues that had
caused the suffering, whether in an industrial tribunal or otherwise.
Secondly, the Police Authority was concerned that the level of
the settlement related to the detailed facts of the case and that
publication of the figures might be seen to encourage speculative
claims against it and set a false benchmark for future claims.
David Bramhall
Clerk to the Police Authority
17 July 1998
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