ANGELA Harris, chairwoman of North Yorkshire Police Authority, will seek a personal appointment with Home Secretary Jack Straw to discuss police complaints and discipline in the wake of the Libby Ashurst sex harassment row.

And, in an unprecedented move, a serving police officer has been granted a private meeting with the new chief constable after speaking out about the affair at a public police authority meeting.

Mrs Harris announced she would seek the meeting to talk over the difficult position the authority found itself in after the scandal hit the North Yorkshire force.

The announcement came at a meeting in which York councillor and police authority member Dave Merrett claimed the organisation's credibility was "zilch" because of the way it had been forced to meet repeatedly behind closed doors.

Mr Merrett said: "There needs to be a process where matters of significant public interest can be brought into the open.

"The credibility of the authority is rightly zilch because we have failed to be accountable to the public because of the system and it is the system that needs to be changed."

Later Alan Wilson, who is a serving detective in Harrogate, spoke out about the secrecy surrounding the way the affair had been handled and appealed for the authority to put an end to the matter.

In front of the new chief constable, David Kenworthy, Mr Wilson said: "All that is happening is that the press are getting little snippets and that has got to stop.

"It is very frustrating for people like me who have worked at Harrogate for a number of years. Until you get a grip of the situation, the matter is going to get worse."

He said the situation was very difficult to deal with and left the meeting when Mrs Harris said he had asked enough questions, but Mr Kenworthy agreed to meet the officer in private later.

Earlier Mr Kenworthy told the meeting he intended to make the force an organisation for which anyone would be proud to work.

Mr Kenworthy, who has been in post only seven days, said he could not comment on events which led to former chief constable David Burke's retirement. He was still in the process of assessing his new force.

He acknowledged that the whole Libby Ashurst affair, which began when the former Harrogate police constable was awarded a massive out-of-court settlement following sexual harassment allegations, had had a bad effect on morale.

He said: "If you are dealing with the culture of an organisation you are not going to change it overnight if you have got a poor culture. The culture here could be bad, but I do not know yet. You have been dealing with extraordinary circumstances here.

"I am not a white knight riding over the hill and I am not going to wave a magic wand.

"What I want to achieve is that everybody, whatever their race, colour or sex, is happy and proud to be a member of this organisation. Most of that is about leading by example, the example I set and the example we all set."

He said he hoped the authority would now be able to revert to normal business.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed the Libby Ashurst affair has so far cost taxpayers in North Yorkshire up to £400,000.

That is more than the authority's annual budget allocation of £300,000 but is being spread over three financial years.

Authority treasurer Mr John Moore said the cost was between £300,000 and £400,000 and includes a lump sum settlement to Libby Ashurst, believed to be more than £100,000, the charges for reports into the affair by auditors Price Waterhouse, independent investigator Elizabeth Filkin's cost and the cost of the Bailey Report which investigated the role of the former chief constable David Burke and other serving officers. Legal fees are also included in the cost.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.