THE Parole Board is to re-examine the case of jailed Yvonne Sleightholme, following Evening Press revelations that she remains locked up because of a board blunder.

Home Secretary David Blunkett is to refer the blind prisoner's application for a transfer to an open prison back to the board for a fresh review.

However, the board's chief executive, Chris Glenn, has revealed that the review will probably take another six months to complete.

Sleightholme was convicted in 1991 of shooting dead a Ryedale farmer's wife, but had continued to protest her innocence ever since.

Her trial judge recommended that she should serve ten years, but she remains in a medium-security jail, despite her exemplary behaviour.

The board stated last autumn that, without completed work on enhanced thinking skills and anger management courses, it felt she posed too great a risk of serious violence for release or transfer.

But the Evening Press recently obtained documents proving that Sleightholme successfully completed an enhanced thinking skills course last August, and that she also underwent an anger management course in 1998.

Editor Liz Page asked for the board to look again at its decision, and Ryedale MP John Greenway made a similar request to a Home Office Minister, pointing out that there had clearly been a procedural error.

Now the board chief executive has replied to the editor, saying that neither the Prison Service nor Sleightholme had made the board aware that she had completed the thinking skills course last August.

"But our inquiries tend to confirm what you say. On that basis, it has been agreed that the Home Secretary will refer the case back to the Parole Board for a fresh review. We estimate that the review will be completed around October this year."

The chief executive said that the board had been aware of anger management work undertaken in 1998, but identified issues that needed further examination.

"Completing a course is one thing; observing behaviour and how lessons learned in theory are put into practice is quite another.

"However, any progress made in this area will be an issue we can look at as part of the fresh review."

Mr Greenway said today he very much welcomed news of the review, which he believed followed a twin-pronged approach by himself and the editor to ministers and the board.

But he said he was "concerned if not dismayed" that it would take another six months for the review to be completed.

He stressed he was not pressing for release, but a transfer to open conditions.

Said Liz Page: "The Parole Board is now in a position to make a decision based on the facts. We hope it does so speedily."

Updated: 11:30 Friday, April 11, 2003