The Metropolitan Police has won a Court of Appeal challenge that allows vetting officers to take all misconduct allegations into account when deciding whether an officer is fit to serve — including allegations that have never been proved.
The ruling, handed down on Monday, overturns the force’s defeat in a High Court judicial review last year and gives the Met significantly wider discretion over whose vetting it can remove on the basis of past behaviour.
The judgment says 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, it says, need to be able to consider all available information relating to an individual.
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley welcomed the decision. He 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.”
He added: “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 case began with a High Court judicial review in February 2025, which challenged Operation Assure, the Met’s then-process for considering the dismissal of 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 Met appealed, arguing that forces must have greater discretion to consider all vetting risks presented by an officer’s past behaviour, including alleged behaviour, in order to protect the public and colleagues.
The Court of Appeal has now backed the force’s position, holding that risk assessment, rather than proof of past events, is at the heart of vetting.
Rowley also addressed the origins of the challenge directly. He said: “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.”
The officer at the centre of the case has not been named in the judgment coverage, and the allegations against him remain unproven. No response from the Police Federation was stated.
The ruling complements and reinforces new vetting regulations introduced by the Home Office in May, which were designed to close gaps in the law and ensure that officers who lose their vetting after a fair process also automatically lose their jobs.
The Met said it continues work under this new process to review the vetting of those identified through Operation Assure, as well as dealing with any new cases.
The judgment is the latest development in the force’s long-running effort to raise standards and remove officers it considers unfit to serve, an effort that has also seen the Met reshape other areas of its operations, including how it responds to electronic tagging breaches.
It also lands against a backdrop of continuing scrutiny of the force’s leadership, with the Commissioner’s position itself the subject of challenge following a six-figure settlement with a victim.
Rowley closed his statement with a warning to officers who fall short. He said: “We will continue our work, alongside policing nationally, to sack those who corrupt our integrity, with confidence the legal system has supported us.”
The full case is Lino Di Maria, R (on the application of) v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis.
