Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

The police and crime commissioner for Durham is to formally write to the chief constable of the force he oversees asking for an investigation into Dominic Cummings, the Guardian has learned.

Steve White, the acting police, crime and victims’ commissioner for Durham, will on Monday ask the force to investigate all the claims about the prime minister’s principal adviser’s time in the Durham area during the coronavirus lockdown and establish the facts.

Cummings, along with his wife and young child, travelled 260 miles from his London home to his parents’ farm in Durham in late March. They say they feared they may be incapacitated by coronavirus and thus struggle to look after their young child. Many view that as a breach of the lockdown rules to stay home and have called for Cummings to resign or be sacked as chief aide to Boris Johnson.

The letter to Durham’s chief constable, Jo Farrell, will ask her to look at all the claims about Cummings’s time in Durham. That includes an alleged sighting of him in Barnard Castle, some distance away from his parents’ home.

The letter will say an inquiry is necessary to maintain public confidence in the force.

Awkward position for the Attorney General and Home Secretary now they have supported Dom