Fees in case of wrongly-jailed pub boss Geoff Monks cost North Northamptonshire Council almost £64,000

A council spent nearly £64,000 on pursuing a case which led to it being forced to pay out £4m in compensation to a former publican wrongly jailed over trumped up food safety charges.

North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) settled the case with Geoff Monks in January 2022.

Dr Monks served jail time next to Soham murderer Ian Huntley after his prosecution in 1999, triggered by being unable to pay fines imposed after he was accused of food safety offences by the former East Northamptonshire Council (ENC).

He brought legal action against ENC in 2019 after he said it pursued a vendetta against him through the courts. ENC was superseded by NCC, which left the new authority liable to pay any damages. NCC’s leader Cllr Jason Smithers (Con) said the case had cost the authority £63,949.60, excluding the £4m paid to Dr Monks from its reserves, since its formation in 2021.

Dr Monks was prosecuted by ENC over alleged food safety offences at his pub, The Snooty Fox in Lowick. He was unable to pay fines and costs amounting to £20,000 and was sent to high security HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes in 2003.

He lost three pubs, his home, was imprisoned and suffered a heart attack following the prosecution. His conviction was overturned in 2015 following a referral from the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Cllr Smithers said it is “very difficult to identify who should be held responsible” for the council’s financial loss and Dr Monks’ prosecution.

Speaking at a full council meeting on Thursday he said: “This authority inherited this problem from the East Northamptonshire Council and we looked to defend this as robustly as we could.

“We have looked at options and it’s an extremely complex matter to hold someone actually responsible however I think if we look at the costs, you will see that while they are still substantial sums, they are sums that could have been a whole lot worse.”