I recently wrote about Community Resolution Orders not being a mere ‘slap on the wrist’ as has been touted and so I read with great interest about a woman by the name of Louise Gather who received this blot on her record without her even knowing about it!

She enjoyed foraging for wild food items and she had a particular interest in mushrooms.  On a particular day in November 2024, she visited a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) called Bradgate Park where she had been told that a there were some rare ‘Magpie Inkcap’ mushrooms growing. She went and spoke to staff there and found the mushrooms.  It seems that someone from Bradgate Park reported her car registration number to the police alleging that she had been seen collecting the mushrooms, which is illegal on an SSSI.

When the trust was asked why they hadn’t approached her at the time, they said she had a knife.  The woman said she did have a knife in her foraging bag to cut mushrooms, but didn’t think she’d taken it out of the bag as she hadn’t collected anything on that occasion.

A policeman visited her house when she was not at home and spoke to her husband who signed a paper apparently to the effect that she would not return to the site.  That seemed to be the end of the matter, but she wrote something on TikTok about this being excessive and she hadn’t picked any mushrooms that day.  This got picked up by the the police force’s professional standards department and they found that the police officer who visited the woman’s home and spoke to her husband had entered the Community Resolution Order onto the woman’s police record.

The Police Force’s Professional Standards Department found that the policeman involved would have been sacked for gross misconduct had he not already resigned, because the ‘case could have caused the woman Significant Harm’.

‘She could ultimately have lost her job had the community resolution remained on her enhanced DBS checks.’ 

Because the correct procedure had not been followed (i.e. the officer hadn’t spoken to her directly and she hadn’t admitted the offence) the order was rescinded.

However, this is a salutary warning that a community resolution order is a lot more than ‘a slap on the wrist’ – it is an Admission of Guilt to a criminal offence, and in the words of the Police, ‘can cause significant harm.’  

Moreover, it is not impossible for you to get one without knowing about it.