Interim PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher in frame for £220,000 a year top job

A former English police chief is one of two applicants shortlisted for the job of chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Jon Boutcher, who is interim PSNI chief constable, and assistant chief constable Bobby Singleton, have been named by the BBC as frontrunners for the £220,000 (€254,000) per year job.

Mr Boutcher is a former chief constable of Bedfordshire Police and previously applied for the North’s top policing job in 2019 but lost out to Simon Byrne.

For the past seven years, he has headed up an independent £37 million investigation into the British army’s top spy during the Troubles.

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Mr Singleton was one of the first student officers to join the PSNI in 2001 when it replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and rose through the ranks to lead the PSNI’s legacy investigations branch as detective chief superintendent in 2019. He also oversaw the service’s paramilitary crime task force.

Applications for the job closed earlier this week. The NI policing board, which has an oversight role, will conduct interviews through a five-person panel.

In September, Mr Byrne resigned as chief constable following several controversies, including an unprecedented data breach.

Mr Boutcher was announced as the interim chief constable last week following reports he was the “preferred candidate” for the three-month post.

In 2016, he was appointed to oversee the Operation Kenova investigation into multiple murders linked to the British agent known as Stakeknife, widely believed to be west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci. Part of the vast inquiry’s remit included the examination of role of the British state and security forces, including the RUC, in the killings.

In an email to families who took part in the Kenova inquiry, Mr Boutcher last week insisted he has “a strong legal footing” to take on the temporary PSNI job amid concerns about a perceived conflict of interest.

Pledging to “continue to support all aspects of Kenova, including engagement with families”, he confirmed that Iain Livingstone will be “in overall command of Kenova for the three-month period that I will be interim chief constable”.

“This is a crucial time for Kenova, and the results of the many years of work will start to make their way into the public domain through the interim report,” Mr Boutcher wrote.

The PSNI has been engulfed in a leadership crisis over the past two months with morale “never lower”, according to a body representing rank-and-file officers.

Mr Byrne faced down calls to step down in August in the wake of the “industrial scale” data leak when the names of 10,000 officers and staff were mistakenly posted online.

He quit a month later after a High Court ruling sparked an outcry over the finding that two junior officers were unlawfully disciplined for an arrest made at a Troubles commemoration event in 2021.

The head of the Northern Ireland Police Federation, which represents 6,500 PSNI officers, told Westminster MPs last month that policing was in a “dark place”.

“We’re in a downward spiral,” said Liam Kelly, adding that the challenge was not only building public confidence but officers’ confidence, and knowing that the PSNI’s senior management team “has their back”.