For Durham Police’s first female chief constable in the force’s 183-year history, Jo Farrell faced a baptism of fire, within months having to enforce strict lockdown rules amid the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Then Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, broke the lockdown rules which he had helped to create right on her patch.
Speaking to the Mirror during an exclusive interview in her office at the Aykley Heads HQ, she reveals why Cummings was not interviewed by police over his 260-mile trip to Durham from London or that day out to Barnard Castle to “test his eyesight”.
