30th August 2026
Part Three of an investigation into Stockport Council’s handling of Michael Parnell, 2011–2013
By the spring of 2012, Michael Parnell had spent the best part of five years in and out of custody, court and complaints procedures over his dealings with Stockport Council. What the record from this final period shows is a case that kept being brought, and kept failing to stick — right through to a final prosecution that collapsed just days before it was due to be heard, at a point when Parnell was, by his solicitors’ own written account, seriously unwell.
A complaint that went nowhere
In April 2012, Parnell made a formal complaint alleging that he had been assaulted and threatened by security staff at Fred Perry House, the council building where several of the earlier restraining order incidents had taken place. The complaint was investigated by Denis McCarthy of Solutions SK, the firm providing security services to the council, who wrote to Parnell on 23 April 2012 to say he had “found no evidence that security guards assaulted you or made threats to your life,” and no breach of the security firm’s code of conduct.
Parnell’s own handwritten note on his copy of the letter raises a fair question about how that investigation was conducted: he records that the complaint had been taken over the phone, with no dates or names recorded, before being described as fully investigated. Whatever the truth of the underlying allegation — and the surviving record does not allow it to be resolved either way — the account given of how it was investigated is not obviously a rigorous one.
The suspended sentence, tested twice
Parnell was still serving the suspended sentence imposed in December 2010, which required him to complete 40 hours of unpaid work. By October 2011, only one of those hours had been completed. The Probation Service alleged two breaches, on 22 October and 11 November 2011, of failing to attend appointments without reasonable excuse.
Parnell’s solicitors produced sick notes showing he had been unfit to attend. At a hearing in December 2011, the Probation Service withdrew the allegation, and the judge allowed the suspended sentence to continue on its original terms, with Parnell permitted to complete “light duties.”
The matter was not over. By the spring of 2012, the Probation Service was alleging two further breaches of the same unpaid work requirement. This time, Parnell’s defence rested on a point of law rather than medical evidence: he produced legislation showing that unpaid work under a suspended sentence order had, by statute, to be completed within twelve months of the order being made — and that, since no application had ever been made to extend that period, the two newly alleged breaches fell outside the time the court had any power to enforce.
His own defence counsel agreed with the argument. So, in the end, did the Crown. A trial listed for June 2012 was adjourned so prosecuting counsel could consider the point; in July 2012, the Crown confirmed it accepted the case law and would not be pursuing either alleged breach. The proceedings were stayed.
Two rounds of breach proceedings against the same suspended sentence order, in other words, ended the same way: neither survived contact with proper scrutiny, one on the facts, the other on the law.
A last charge, and a final illness
In November 2012, Parnell was arrested again, this time on an entirely different charge: disorderly conduct under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, again arising from an incident at Fred Perry House. He was charged, granted legal aid, and released on bail with conditions that included no contact with Stephen Duggan — the same council employee named in the January 2011 Restraining Order matter — and no entry to Fred Perry House without a written appointment. A trial was fixed for 21 January 2013.
By the second week of January 2013, Parnell’s solicitor was writing to him in urgent terms about his ability to prepare for trial. A letter of 9 January notes that Parnell had failed to respond to earlier correspondence and warns that counsel would not be properly prepared. Five days later, on 14 January, the same solicitor wrote again, this time recording that a phone call from Parnell had made clear he had “ongoing serious medical issues,” raising the possibility that the trial itself might need to be vacated if he required hospital treatment.
The trial never went ahead. On 18 January 2013, three days before it was due to start, the Crown Prosecution Service told Parnell’s solicitors by phone that the case was being discontinued. The written confirmation, sent on the day the trial had been listed to begin, gave a reason: “there is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.” All bail conditions ceased with immediate effect.
A pattern, stated plainly
Across roughly five years, Michael Parnell faced an extraordinary number of arrests and at least eight distinct sets of criminal or quasi-criminal proceedings arising from his conduct in and around Stockport town centre. Only one — the five-count restraining order breach prosecution of 2010 — resulted in a conviction. Every other matter, without exception, ended in discontinuance, no further action, or outright rejection of the allegation. The final case collapsed for the most fundamental reason a prosecution can fail: insufficient evidence.
None of that resolves the question of who was right about the underlying dispute that started it all — a father’s argument that his adopted daughters were entitled to continued support the council had withdrawn. What the documentary record does show, clearly and repeatedly, is a level of legal and enforcement activity that consistently outran the strength of the case behind it.
The alleged assault with a sneeze which CCTV, access to which was denied to him for years, hadn’t taken place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA34fyU1eds
This concludes the documented chronology as it currently stands. Several threads remain open — including the outcome of the original 2010 ASBO breach trial, the appeal that overturned Parnell’s earlier conviction, and correspondence still to be located — and may form the basis of a further instalment should the underlying material come to light.
