Kenyon-Miller for PCC?

The first shots appear to have been fired in the race to become the Conservative candidate for the North Yorkshire Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections. The elections are due to take place in May 2016 and will be hotly contested by the Tory candidates as North Yorkshire is a relatively safe seat.

Former County and Borough Councillor, Jane Kenyon-Miller, who has lived on the outskirts of Scarborough for over a decade, ruled herself out of the race to become the Police & Crime Commissioner in 2012 saying:

My first love has always been the people I represent in my council work, the people of Whitby.

The love of Whitby people was not reciprocated as Kenyon-Miller recently lost her Mayfield seat on Scarborough Borough Council to Labour. Kenyon-Miller stood down as a member of North Yorkshire County Council in 2013.

The former head of the North Yorkshire Police Authority, Jane Kenyon-Miller, took aim at the lack of transparency at North Yorkshire Police during an interview with the Scarborough News, which could be seen as the start of her campaign to become the next North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner.

Gone are the days of an open and transparent relationship.

It is a shame the need for transparency didn’t extend to Kenyon-Miller’s voting record as a Scarborough Borough Councillor. For seventeen months I’ve been trying to find out how Kenyon-Miller and the rest of the Councillors voted when they lavished the award of Alderman on Peter Jaconelli in 1996. It was widely known that Jaconelli, a fellow Tory and close friend of Jimmy Savile, was a serial paedophile and operated in the town for decades.

The lack of transparency at North Yorkshire Police has seen the force launch civil action against two contributors to the North Yorks Enquirer, with the aim of curtailing our citizen journalism investigations. The civil action has now cost the taxpayer upwards of £400,000. Kenyon-Miller is party to those legal proceedings and is currently having it funded by her former colleagues in the North Yorkshire Police.

It is not the first time that citizen journalists at the North Yorks Enquirer have come under fire from the authorities. In 2014 Nigel was frivolously reported to the DWP for benefit fraud by someone within Scarborough Town Hall, but the DWP quickly turned their attention to Bill Miller, Jane Kenyon-Miller’s husband following allegations of impropriety with benefit payments.

Her role at the now defunct North Yorkshire Police Authority has also come under close scrutiny. Whilst Chairman, the Authority agreed payments close to £100,000 to senior Police Officers which have now been deemed illegal. The former senior officers have since refused to repay the monies involved.

Kenyon-Miller’s name has appeared in Private Eye a number of times as a result of investigations by the North Yorks Enquirer, most notably for the non-declaration of her interests in Dales Timber Limited, which was trading with North Yorkshire County Council whilst Kenyon-Miller was elected to the authority.

Further investigations have asked questions why Kenyon-Miller didn’t make a declaration for Belvedere Computers Inc, a firm which was suspended in California in the 1980s for the non-payment of substantial debts.

Lastly, Kenyon-Miller was found to have taken over £1,200 during one year in IT payments from both North Yorkshire Police Authority and North Yorkshire County Council. No monies were ever repaid.

The Private Eye pieces are reproduced below.