"They have apologised for how they handled my complaint – but what they really should be apologising for is the way Carrie was treated."

Caroline Flack's mother Christine Flack has received an apology from Scotland Yard over their handling of a complaint raised about Caroline's assault charge. Caroline passed away in February 2020 at the age of 40. In the months prior to her death, Caroline was charged with assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Bruton. She pleaded not guilty to the charges in 2019, and her solicitor told the court that Burton didn't support the prosecution. She was subsequently released on bail, and was due to appear in court in March 2020. Caroline's management were critical of the police's handling of the charges, and the Met Police have now apologised for failing to keep a full record of their reasons to charge the TV presenter. The written apology comes after Christine brought her complaint about how the charge was handled by the police to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. The ruling of this determined that Flack was not treated any differently by police due to her celebrity status. However, it did acknowledge that there were some issues with regards to keeping data about Christine's complaint. As Metro reports, the letter from Chief Superintendent Andy Carter from the Met Police said: "I am sincerely sorry for our inability to previously capture an adequate contemporaneous record of streamlined, balanced and transparent decision-making regarding the CPS appeal and statistical data." In response, Christine said that the force should be apologising for how they treated Caroline. In an interview with the Eastern Daily Press, she said: "They have apologised for how they handled my complaint – but what they really should be apologising for is the way Carrie was treated. "The fact new guidelines have been brought in means something was wrong. I believe if I had not said anything, nothing would have changed either." She added that she felt that the apology was "copied and pasted", and only came as a result of a suggestion from the IOPC.

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• Caroline Flack's mother defends Meghan Markle following Jeremy Clarkson's article
• Laura Whitmore shares birthday tribute to Caroline Flack