[2025] EWHC 2684 (KB)

Ms Cass is a solicitor within the Government Legal Department and had conduct of this case on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service. She became involved when she was asked to take a witness statement from Mr Tarrant. She stated that she met Mr Tarrant (who had retired) on two occasions on the 21st January 2019 on the 9th May 2019 and continued to liaise with the civil litigation team and Mr Tarrant in the subsequent months.

On the 1^st August 2019 she spoke with Mr Tarrant over the phone and went through the witness statement line by line. She stated that at the end of the meeting Mr Tarrant confirmed he was happy with the content of the statement and the documents exhibited to it. It was agreed that she would send this version to the civil litigation team who would forward it to Mr Tarrant for a final review and his signature. The statement was sent to Mr Tarrant on the 1^st August 2019. On the 13^th November 2019 she received a telephone call confirming that Mr Tarrant had been admitted to hospital having suffered a heart attack and that he had not, as at that date, signed and returned his statement. Mr Tarrant died on 23^rd December 2019. Mr Metzer referred in his submissions to the delay between Mr Tarrant receiving the statement and becoming ill and that this may have been because of unhappiness with its content. However Ms Cass was not challenged about his confirmation that he was happy (at that stage) with its content and it is difficult to see why he would have changed his view given the content of the statement.