The rise and fall of Northamptonshire chief constable Nick Adderley who lied his way to the top

But how did this publicity-hungry man, painted by his legal counsel during his gross misconduct hearing as someone who wasn’t interested in the media, become the victim of his own carefully constructed back story?

Former chief constable Nick Adderley, now 57, was keen to go public on social media proffering his thoughts about Covid regulations, Tazers, smart motorways, and his support for a ‘medals for heroes’ campaign.

Ironically, service medals he wore on his own police tunic led to his downfall after veterans became aware he wore a South Atlantic Medal given to those who fought in the Falklands War – when he would have been just 15-years-old.

And it was Northants Police’s own PR department’s press release that helped to bring him down when he did not correct the falsehoods it contained, lies he had begun.

Hiding under a smokescreen of excuses that he used in his defence that he was ‘lazy and sloppy’ and didn’t have time to double check articles put out in his name, his lies unravelled.

Callum Cowx, chairman of the independent panel that found Adderley had indeed committed gross misconduct, said the former chief constable had a ‘genuinely fascinating success story’ , an ‘amazing story’ worthy of telling but that ‘something in Nick Adderley told him that was not enough’.

Mr Cowx and the panel concluded that Adderley had been ‘compelled to create a fantasy which he felt was better suited to a police officer as he climbed the ranks’.

So how did a man with a poor academic record rise to the top of Northamptonshire’s police force – and how did his own lies finish it?

Nick Adderley from Royal Navy Cadet to The Falklands War

Nick Adderley was born in September 1966 – and was the middle child of three sons.

At the age of 10, he joined the Royal Navy cadets, time he later tried to claim as serving in the Armed Forces.

Halfway through 1982, in April, when he would have been in the fourth form at school, and 15-years-old, The Falklands War began. The war finished on June 14, 1982.

His eldest brother Richard (Rick) had joined the Royal Navy and did see service in the Falklands but was only deployed three weeks after hostilities were over, travelling on a seconded merchant vessel, not HMS Hermes as claimed.

More importantly, only service personnel who saw action in the war were awarded the South Atlantic Medal with rosette – the medal worn by Nick Adderley years later – a medal he claimed to have belonged to his brother and given to him when he left for a new life in Australia in 2008. In fact Rick was not eligible to apply for the South Atlantic Medal (with or without rosette) until years later in 2015.

In 1984, Nick Adderley signed up to the Royal Navy at the age of 18 years and one month.

His career in the service lasted just over two years, when at the age of 20, he was discharged for ‘Shore unsuitability of temperament’ – the term meaning a ‘persistent and obvious failure’ by an individual to ‘adapt to the basic, but unique demands of Service life’.

His service record showed that he did not receive any commendations or medals in his time and when he left he was at the lowest rank – an Able-Seaman.

Years later, he embellished his ‘modest’ Naval career, adding eight years’ service and claimed to be a ‘Commander’ who had piloted a boat as a Coxwain in charge of junior officers, had been a military negotiator in Haiti – a country to which he had never been – and fought in the Falklands War.

Once discharged from the Navy, Adderley sought to support his wife and young family. He worked in a pub, in Kwik Save and as a lorry driver.

From PC Adderley to Chief Constable

In February 1992, at the age of 25, Adderley joined Cheshire Police remaining there for 18 years, progressing to the rank of superintendent.

March 2010 saw him promoted to chief superintendent in a move to Greater Manchester Police, spending almost six years at the force.

It was while heading up Greater Manchester Police’s Tameside division when Dale Cregan brutally murdered police constables Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in an ambush in September 2012.

Adderley admitted the tragic murders of the officers had a profound impact on him. It also led to a lasting friendship with Fiona Bone’s father Bryn. Adderley wrote a heartfelt foreword to Mr Bone’s book about his daughter’s murder. At PC Hughes’ funeral, Adderley was photographed wearing the South Atlantic Medal he claimed he had been awarded. It was this ‘dipping his toes into the water’ of deceit set up the previous year.

In 2011, an article in the Manchester Evening News published an interview given by Adderley telling his story how he ‘rose up the ranks to lieutenant, serving on HMS Invincible, Hermes and Anglesey, during which he saw conflict in Haiti during the civil uprising of 1984’. All untrue.

Roll on a dozen years, when his career came under close scrutiny, he attempted to explain to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) why he hadn’t corrected the facts. He blamed the reporter and said he never read articles about himself.

His next career step saw a move to Staffordshire Police promoted to Assistant Chief Constable in January 2016.

After two years in June 2018, he applied to be Chief Constable of Northamptonshire Police.

His CV and application must have impressed the panel. He counter-signed details in the form were true – how he was a ‘former Commander’ in the Royal Navy, recognised for his ‘service as a military negotiator in Haiti’ in 1986. In the ‘Education of note’ section, he said that he had attended Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth for four years between 1982 and 1986.

The truth was more mundane. He later admitted to investigators he had applied to the prestigious college but was never accepted.

Vetting procedures had not picked up the discrepancies and the then-police and crime commissioner Stephen Mold had stated he was ‘entirely confident’ Adderley was the ‘right person for the role’.

Quick to go on Twitter – now X – to publicise his ‘no-nonsense’ approach to policing, he once again had the opportunity to set the record straight in February 2023, after nearly five years at the helm.

In an email to senior communications officers who had drafted a press release giving his force’s support of former military personnel entitled ‘Northamptonshire Police proudly support those who serve’, Adderley had given it the OK.

It said: “Chief Constable Nick Adderley, who served in the Royal Navy for 10 years including the Falklands War before becoming a police officer, is a staunch advocate of the immense transferable skills and abilities that people with military careers can bring to policing.”

Instead of correcting the two falsehoods – the duration of his Royal Naval service and the reference to his service in the Falklands War – he positively affirmed it, emailing back ‘this is great, thank you’.

The whistleblower former wife and the stolen valour

On July 14, 2023 a complaint came into the OPFCC customer services team headed up by a former police superintendent Paul Fell.

A former wife of Adderley reported she had seen media coverage suggesting that her former husband had served in the Royal Navy for 10 years and was a Falklands War veteran. Her complaint was that this was not the case, not least because Adderley was only 15-years-old during the Falklands War.

After the weekend, Mr Fell began ‘reasonable and proportionate scoping’ to get to the bottom of the allegation, not least because he had seen Adderley ‘wearing a South Atlantic Medal Ribbon on his police tunic’.

Over the phone Adderley told Mr Fell he had joined the Royal Navy in early 1982 and that he was 17 at the time. He’d completed his basic training and was then deployed straight to the Falklands War, serving on HMS Hermes – Mr Fell remembered seeing a picture of an aircraft carrier on the wall of Adderley’s office – and he had served 10 years in the Royal Navy until 1992.

A day later Adderley emailed Mr Fell and raised an issue about the quality of the phone line. He said that medal ribbon that he wore, was gifted to him by his brother (Rick) and the ‘picture’ of his service in the Falklands War had been built up over time through misreporting and assumption. He finally explained his ex-wife was just ‘her latest attack which feels again totally unjustified and another attempt to damage me and my career’. Adderley added: “I have never stated that I served in the (Falklands) conflict and any reference to this in the media is incorrect and needs addressing.”

Carrying on as normal, Adderley marking his fifth anniversary as top cop he took to X to tell followers on August 1, 2023, of his review of his first five years.

He wrote: “Last night I spent a couple of hours considering the changes and investments made in @NorthantsPolice over the past 5 years. I watched videos, read press articles and a whole host of other media stories, ready for my fifth annual report. One constant is clear.

“The constant is the dedication and determination of the great men and women who work for this force. The challenges have been incredible both from external pressures and internally too but the progress has been remarkable, and continues to be, with so much more to come.”

Scoping turned to a full-blown independent investigation with the case handed over to the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) on September 14, 2023. On October 3, 2023 the IOPC served a Reg 17 notice on Adderley concerning these allegations.

Ten days after the Reg 17 landed on Nick Adderley’s desk, on the other side of the world from Northamptonshire, Rick Adderley applied for his South Atlantic Medal.

Both brothers had been wearing South Atlantic Medals with the rosette to denote war service. Neither had served in the Falklands War.

In evidence to the misconduct hearing panel a medal expert from the Ministry of Defence said the medal worn by Adderley and purporting to be gifted to him by his bother as ‘110 per cent’ fake.

After hearing four days of evidence, the three-man panel concluded Adderley lied and exaggerated his naval rank, length of service and achievements when applying to become chief constable of Northamptonshire Police. They found Adderley committed gross misconduct and was dismissed without notice.

Mr Cowx said that Adderley ‘embraced’ the media turning the ‘spotlight on himself’ and ‘cultivated an image of himself as a no-nonsense man of action’. The panel chaired by Mr Cowx were ‘satisfied’ that Adderley was the ‘originator of the inaccuracies’ in articles and found his ‘audacity to be quite staggering’.

Mr Cowx said: "Lying became engrained and he continued to do so with arrogant temerity.

"Alarm bells should have rung but they did not because the checks were clearly not done. Here we have someone who slipped under the radar to take up a senior position in the police service, having very obviously lied to get the job."