Council pays £4m to pub landlord after 20-year feud

When Geoff Monks banned a woman from his village pub after a row about a bottle of wine, he assumed it was just another minor spat that punctuates the life of any landlord.

However, he claimed that disagreement at his 17th-century inn triggered a council “vendetta” that culminated in him losing his home, health, business and even saw him languishing in a prison cell next to Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer.

Now Mr Monks is to receive about £4 million after the council conceded its prosecution “should never have occurred”.

The settlement was reached after Mr Monks, now 67, maintained his innocence for two decades, arguing that East Northamptonshire Council pursued him through the courts in a vendetta which amounted to an “abuse of process”.

The last time anyone recovered damages for abuse of process was 160 years ago.

In the latest twist in this protracted case, Mr Monks’s legal team, Laytons ETL Global, issued a statement claiming the guest he ejected from his pub was at the time involved in a sexual relationship with Roger Heath, the council’s chief executive responsible for the “final decision to prosecute” the landlord.

On Friday night, the woman vehemently denied the suggestion she knew or had had an affair with Mr Heath, or that she reported the food poisoning incident to the council.

Mr Heath could not be contacted on Friday night.

Prosecuted over food safety laws

In 1998, Mr Monks, at the time the landlord of The Snooty Fox in Lowick, Northamptonshire, claimed that he asked a villager to leave his pub after a dispute about a bottle of wine she was served.

The woman was later diagnosed with food poisoning and the pub was reported to the council. The local authority investigation apparently uncovered “mouldy ham” at the premises in 1999.

The following year, Mr Monks was prosecuted over food safety laws, both at The Snooty Fox and another of his pubs, the Samuel Pepys at nearby Slipton.

He was convicted for The Snooty Fox allegations in 2000, despite what his lawyers described as “thin and contradictory evidence against him”.

Because he was unable to pay a £13,500 fine and £8,300 of costs, he was sent to a category A prison in 2003. It was while he was at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes that he suffered a heart attack and was also placed in a cell next to Huntley, the school caretaker who murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002.

That year, Mr Monks was also convicted over allegations regarding the Samuel Pepys bar, but this was later overturned on appeal.

It was not until 2015 that Mr Monks’s Snooty Fox conviction was overturned, following a referral from the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

In 2019, Mr Monks took his case to the High Court. He claimed that the council had conducted 5,000 food safety inspections of premises that prepared food in the eight years before the case which resulted in just two prosecutions, compared with the three brought against him.

Council’s actions ‘caused serious personal injury’

Councillor Jason Smithers, the leader of North Northamptonshire Council, which last year took over the operations and liabilities of East Northamptonshire Council, said on Friday the settlement had been reached because the the prosecutions were “an abuse of process and should never have occurred”.

He told the Northamptonshire Telegraph: “It is accepted that East Northamptonshire Council’s actions caused serious personal injury, loss, and damage to him over a period of more than 20 years, and I sincerely apologise for those actions.

“I hope that Mr Monks is able to have his reputation restored and that the substantial damages which the council has agreed to pay him go some way towards assisting him to move forward with his life.”

A spokesman for Northamptonshire Police said that an investigation was underway to establish whether any criminal offence had been committed in the miscarriage of justice which saw Mr Monks jailed.

Geraint Thomas, the partner and head of the disputes team at Laytons ETL Global, said: “This settlement finally provides full vindication for our client more than 20 years after East Northamptonshire Council began its abusive campaign against him.

“The impact on his health, finances and wellbeing has been nothing short of devastating, but I hope that today’s settlement will enable him at least to begin to rebuild his life.”