NORTH Yorkshire Police today said abuse of position by its officers for a sexual purpose was “very rare” - with one incident in the last two years.

The force was responding to a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) - published today - which criticised police forces nationally for not doing enough to prevent such abuse of position.

Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Winward said North Yorkshire Police was already doing most of the things recommended by HMIC, “and we have a plan for areas for development”.

However, she said the force would be unlikely to comply with at least one of the watchdog’s recommendations - buying software to monitor the online actions of every officer - due to financial restrictions.

She said: “Although we understand why the national strategy would recommend this, the reality is that we have to balance cost against the size of the problem.

“Here in North Yorkshire we have – fortunately – very few instances of abuse of position for a sexual purpose. There was only one in 2016, and none the year before that, and we were able to identify the issue and deal with it using the systems we already have.”

The incident of abuse of position did not appear to have been progressed as far as a gross misconduct hearing, suggesting the accused officer may have resigned from post before action was taken.

DCC Winward also acknowledged there had been some confusion over the level of information requested by HMIC on the force’s plans.

She said: “Earlier this year we sent HMIC a two page overview of what we do to prevent officers abusing their position for sexual purposes. HMIC based its assessment on what we provided. We now understand we should have given much more detail, so we’ve taken that feedback on board and we will put it right.

“Meanwhile, we can reassure the public that abuse of position is a very rare occurrence in North Yorkshire Police, and when it does happen we investigate it extremely thoroughly, and take decisive action wherever that is necessary.”

A report by HMIC in 2016 said North Yorkshire Police needed to “review the capacity and capability of its professional standards integrity unit”, and “ensure that it has the capability and capacity to monitor all its computer systems”.

DCC Winward said she was confident in the force’s ability “to identify and deal with this issue”, but accepted “we need to do more work to communicate that more fully to HMIC in future”.