HUNDREDS of public complaints about North Yorkshire Police led to no action being taken.

Figures released by the Government this week showed misconduct details of each force around England in 2015/16, revealing that 529 complaints against North Yorkshire Police officers ended with no action taken.

Action was taken by management within the force against police officers on 12 occasions after public complaints, and meetings were held to discuss complaints against officers on five occasions.

On matters of conduct, four meetings were held over conduct issues and 27 cases led to no action being taken, while six cases led to management action being taken against officers for matters which were not considered misconduct.

However, 29 cases led to management action being taken over misconduct by police officers, though over matters not brought forward by the public.

The figures are the latest available from the Government, and run until the end of March 2016, meaning the recent changes to the availability of misconduct information could not be taken into account.

Since last year, North Yorkshire Police misconduct hearings have been open to the public, and have seen a number of high profile hearings made public.

In June last year, the first disciplinary hearing at police headquarters to be open to the public and press saw PC Simon Ryan, who had been with the force for 13 years, sacked for gross misconduct.

He had gone on patrol wearing a woolly hat with the words “I love weed”, despite having been asked to remove it, and was also accused of defacing a suspected child abuser’s CV with the words “kiddie fiddler” and “paedo”.

The panel concluded that the appropriate sanction “was dismissal without notice demonstrating the gravity attached by the panel to the gross misconduct”.

In October, PC Paul Southgate went before a misconduct hearing after making sexist and racist comments to staff, referring to black people as Golliwogs and claiming a female colleague was “gagging for it”.

He was allowed to keep his job, but his apologies and personal circumstances were taken into account by the panel.