Miller case review terms revealed

Vance Miller

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THE terms of the independent investigation into the collapse of the multi-million pound Vance Miller trial have been published.

The details can be read on the Oldham Council website, which is at www.oldham.gov.uk 

The review is being carried out by lawyer Stuart Dobson following the aborted trial at Manchester Crown Court which was sensationally halted by Judge Jonathon Foster in January.

Council Chief Executive Charlie Parker called in Mr Dobson, who worked for 32 years as a lawyer for various large local authorities including Birmingham City Council, to carry out an independent review.

No details of how long the inquiry will take, or when it will report back, have been given.

It will look at two aspects of the case — an overall review of the court action and any disciplinary action against council staff.

He will decide whether the council could have reasonably foreseen the outcome of the trial and if it acted in the best interests of the public when it decided on a criminal prosecution.

He will also assess if it had enough expertise, legal advice and acted appropriately to pursue the prosecution.

And he will look at how the decision to prosecute was taken, managed and monitored, including risk management.

His report will assess the main factors that led to the outcome of the trial, whether any actions could have been taken to protect the council, and to identify the total costs.

He will also look at insurance cover, any liabilities as a result of the case, the implications for the council’s finances and wider risk assessment and management arrangements.

Mr Dobson will also examine actions of staff in the Trading Standards Service, and whether there are other staff who should be investigated, before any decision about formal disciplinary hearings are held.

The council’s head of trading standards, Tony Allen, is currently suspended.

When Mr Dobson took up his role on January 22 he said: “I intend to conduct the review in a timely and open manner.”


Author’s spotlight on Vance

A NEW book is promising to give an insight into the life of controversial kitchen boss Vance Miller and his bungled fraud trial.

Novelist John Newton, a full-time writer from Bedfordshire, has spent the last two years with unprecedented access to Mr Miller and his business.

The resulting book, the first ever written about the colourful businessman and entitled “Vance Miller — Kitchen Gangster?”, is now available following the collapse of the court case.

It uncovers Mr Miller’s early spells in jail for selling stolen goods, how he served time in America for smuggling diamonds, his adventures in running gold mines and being shot in Africa, and how he came to own Hathershaw’s Maple Mill and build up his kitchen business.

It chronicles how he acquired huge oak forests, granite quarries, factories and shops in China to expand his business into a global operation and how he survived the massive blaze at Maple Mill and the Trading Standards fraud case that threatened to derail him.

Mr Newton interviewed those involved in the case and his book ends with the trial, when the charges against Mr Miller and three co-defendants were thrown out of court.

London-born Mr Newton was educated in Germany before serving in East Africa with the armed services and Kenyan Police, as well as working in Kenya as a businessman.

He broadcast extensively on Kenya and Uganda Radio, writing and producing his own programmes, and wrote of his travels throughout Africa, Arabia and India in an English newspaper.

Mr Newton (75) first met Mr Miller when he was asked to write an article on him by a PR man who was producing a DVD on the entrepreneur.

Mr Newton said: “I knew nothing about Vance apart from one of his documentaries. I went completely open minded and interviewed him for two days.

“I was really tough and turned him upside down and inside out and got all sorts of things out of him.

“I could not find that he was doing anything illegal in the way that was being said. At the end of the two days I said ‘this isn’t an article it’s got to be a book’.

“I laid down a couple of rules — full access to himself and his business and he always had to tell the truth. As far as I’m aware he did.

“I had no aim other than interviewing everyone possible and being completely neutral.

“Those people whose opinion I respect, which includes other writers I know and people I gave the book to comment on, say I appear to have captured him really well and he appears to have come out as much put upon by the authorities and extremely clever to have got through it.

“I write for a book to be enjoyed and to be interesting. The majority of people who have read it have been extremely happy with it, that’s all I want.”

The book, priced £8, is available by ordering from local bookshops or Amazon.