30th August 2026

Part Two of an investigation into Stockport Council’s handling of Michael Parnell, 2010–2011

By the end of 2009, Michael Parnell had been convicted once, made the subject of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, and arrested and released without charge after police concluded the order’s own wording was too vague to prosecute. Rather than settling the matter, 2010 saw the restrictions on him widen sharply — and set in motion the run of prosecutions that would define the following three years.

A wider order

A court exhibit map, prepared for proceedings in September 2010, shows the scale of what Parnell was by then excluded from: not a handful of named buildings, but a broad zone covering most of Stockport town centre — an area that, on the ground, took in the public library, the public toilets and the railway station, alongside the council buildings the order was ostensibly targeted at.

The practical consequences of a zone that size showed up quickly in the paperwork. In May 2010, Parnell’s solicitors applied to vary his bail conditions so that he could travel through Stockport railway station to attend a medical appointment, and separately attend a Town Hall meeting, both listed for the same day. Magistrates refused the application as “without merits,” ruling that the medical appointment could be attended without breaching the exclusion zone. Whether or not that assessment was correct, the fact that a defendant needed the court’s express permission to establish whether a medical appointment was even compatible with his bail conditions says something about how far-reaching the restriction had become.

Five charges, one building

Between February and March 2010, Parnell was charged with five separate offences of breaching his restraining order, all identical in substance: entering Stopford House, the council’s main office building, on 22 February, 24 February, 25 February, 4 March and 10 March, contrary to section 5(5) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

His solicitor’s advice, recorded in an attendance note from the time, is candid about the strength of the case: “the evidence against you was moderately strong.” Parnell was advised of the discount available for an early guilty plea — up to a third off any sentence — but on the basis of his own account of events, was advised to plead not guilty. His solicitor also advised him, after considering the specific facts, that trial at the Crown Court would be “more appropriate” than at the Magistrates’ Court, despite the higher court’s greater sentencing powers, on the basis that a jury was statistically more likely to acquit.

The case went to trial at Manchester (Minshull Street) Crown Court in November 2010. Parnell was convicted on all five counts.

A conflict of interest, four days before sentencing

Sentencing was listed for 20 December 2010. Four days before the hearing, on 16 December, Parnell’s solicitors, Morton’s, wrote to him marked “URGENT”: “there is potentially a conflict between your current instructions and your former instruction which may cause both ourselves and your Defence Counsel to have to withdraw from the case.” He was asked to attend an emergency appointment before the hearing.

The letter does not set out the substance of the conflict, and none of the surviving documents explain it further. What is clear is that a defendant facing sentencing at the Crown Court was told, with only days’ notice, that his legal team might not be able to continue acting for him. On 20 December 2010, Parnell was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a requirement to complete 40 hours of unpaid work.

Three arrests in a fortnight

If 2010 had established the machinery — a wide exclusion zone, a live restraining order, and a suspended sentence hanging over any further breach — January 2011 tested it to its limits.

  • 5 January 2011: Parnell was arrested at Cheadle Heath after being seen on the steps of Stockport Town Hall. In his police interview, he argued he had not breached the order: the steps, he said, were not part of the building he was excluded from, and in any case the two individuals named on the order no longer worked for the council, which he argued called its continued validity into question. He was charged. The case was listed for trial at Stockport Magistrates’ Court on 28 February 2011 — and discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service before it was heard.
  • 11 January 2011: Parnell was arrested again at Fred Perry House. He was released without charge after his solicitors successfully argued a naming error in the paperwork.
  • 18 January 2011: Parnell was arrested a third time, again at Fred Perry House, this time after an allegation from a council security guard, Stephen Duggan, that Parnell had walked into the building, used an internal phone, and approached him. Parnell’s account was that he had entered to use the toilet and to make a welfare-related call to a named council contact, and that he had not seen Duggan or known he was on duty. In February 2011, the police confirmed they were taking no further action.

Three arrests, under the same order, inside a fortnight — and each of them, when it concluded, concluded without a conviction. One case reached a Magistrates’ Court listing and was discontinued; the other two never got past the police station. None of the three matters has ever produced a finding against Parnell.

It is worth stating plainly what that record shows, independent of any wider argument about the fairness of the order itself: whatever occurred on those three occasions, none of it was ultimately judged by police or prosecutors to amount to a proven offence.

Part Three will examine the year that followed — the disputed complaint against council security staff, the resumption of proceedings over the suspended sentence, and the point at which the case against Michael Parnell finally began to unravel on its own legal terms.