Andrew Milne’s letters: criminal barrister delivers his verdict

It’s been a little while since our last big update on Andrew Milne. If you’ve recently joined us, he’s the solicitor who bought hundreds of Sheffield freeholds, then proceeded to send “very aggressive” letters containing legal threats. Several homeowners paid sums of upwards of £25,000 to buy their freeholds after hearing from Milne.

Last week saw a big step in the case. Attentive readers may recall that James Gray, a senior criminal barrister with a string of impressive cases to his name, had visited Sheffield to talk to leaseholders and gather evidence. Since then, he’s been beavering away on his legal opinion of what’s happened in Sheffield. Last week, it arrived, including his summary of what criminal actions may have occurred in this instance. We’ve also got a whole load more updates, as Milne returned to court last week, and national newspapers and broadcasters pick up the story.

As well as that we have a mini-review of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Lyceum, a talk about an infamous trans-Atlantic drag king, and an extraordinary development in the city's housing market: the first half a million pound Hunter's Bar terrace.

Send us a tip! Since we got our incredibly basic new smartphone with Whatsapp on it, the tips have been flying in. If you’ve got something to tell us, small or big, then get in touch.

Send us a message

In case you missed it

For our weekend read, Victoria looked into the murky world of urban exploring. Lost Places and Forgotten Faces is one of the most visible explorers on social media, but some of his behaviour has left other members of the community with a bad taste in their mouths. “He doesn’t give a fuck about preservation, history or genuine exploring as a hobby,” one of his urbex peers insists, while another describes him as a “massive troll who’s trying his best to piss off as many people in the UK urbex scene” as he can. You can decide for yourself here.

Last week we sent out two great newsletters to our 3,000+ paying members. In the first, Mollie spoke to activists from Sheffield Palestine Women’s Scholarship Fund, a group that over the last 19 years has helped more than 300 Palestinian women through university. “This is such a lovely piece — really uplifting,” commented Tribune member Sue Taylor.

And in the second, Dan delved into The Hagues, one of Sheffield’s richest families and biggest landowners. The story started by looking into the family’s allegedly poor stewardship of several historic buildings, but morphed into something much stranger as a paper trail of court cases revealed just how spectacularly the family had fallen out. An extract is below.

By 2015, another five rounds of litigation later, Martin may have been just worn down. In a case known as Hague 5, he spoke with total candour: "I accept that I have tried hard to advance us all, and if this has involved telling lies and deceit and false documents then I have done it. And it is all I have done all my life." That wasn’t all he had to say though. Referring to his siblings, he told the court: "But they cannot hold their heads up. They did it too."

The big picture: Pride of Yorkshire 🦁

The Pride of Yorkshire, The Children’s Hospital Charity’s forthcoming sculpture trial, is now just a few months away. From June, 300 life-sized lions will appear across South Yorkshire, painted by artists from our region and beyond. You can see them being painted right now at a studio near the entrance to The Light cinema on The Moor. Following in the footsteps of Bears of Sheffield in 2021 and Herd of Sheffield in 2016, it is aiming to raise £2.8 million for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The lions will be on display from June until September 2026.

The big story: Andrew Milne’s letters: criminal barrister delivers his verdict

Recap: After we published our story about Andrew Milne, a criminal barrister called James Gray took an interest, and travelled up from London. He met several leaseholders at a community meeting in Bradway, and started reviewing dozens of letters. Since then, he’s been working away to publish a full legal opinion on the events that have taken place.

Gray’s credentials: Gray is listed on the Legal500 website as one of the UK’s top lawyers. According to the page on his company’s website: “His recent fraud and financial crime cases include a man charged with human trafficking alongside a multi-million pound money laundering scheme; a £1.5m trademark fraud; a complex million-pound banking fraud and a number of high value applications under the Proceeds of Crime Act.”

Gray’s analysis: The Tribune is today publishing the full opinion. While this advice is necessarily anonymised, and doesn’t cite any individual by name, here are a few key passages:

If a property has been improved, there is in practice rarely any diminution in the value of the property and there could be no sensible suggestion that the value of the property in 800 years would be diminished

Many of the letters received by homeowners included high court claims for “damages”, citing improvements that had been made by homeowners. But given the length of the leases, and the fact that properties hadn’t suffered any loss of value from these improvements, why did Milne suggest he would be owed these damages?

Freehold reversions on properties in Sheffield with 800-year leases are likely to be worth around £500.

Why, therefore, did Milne suggest that in some cases that the true value of freeholds could be as much as £200,000, before “reluctantly” offering a lower price of £25,000?

It would be false to represent that something is worth £15,000 when it is, in fact, worth £500; it would be false to represent that something is worthless when, in fact, it is valuable; it would be false to represent that a claim in damages would lead to an award of many thousands when, in fact, the award would be nominal. If such representations are made dishonestly and the purpose is to make a gain by inducing the recipients of the representations to pay more for something than it is worth, the maker of those representations would be guilty of fraud.

In Milne’s letters, he made two false suggestions. Firstly, that people’s homes were “not saleable” without the freehold (implying that the leasehold was essentially worthless) and secondly, that the freeholds themselves were worth five figure sums, when the true value was in the hundreds. Did he do this knowingly, with the intent to achieve a gain for himself?

There is no strict definition of ‘a course of conduct which amounts to harassment’. It is, however, generally understood to involve improper, oppressive and unreasonable conduct that is targeted at an individual and calculated to alarm an individual or cause an individual distress.

There is no question that Milne’s letters caused alarm and distress to several individuals. Were they “targeted” to do so? Given the threats of high court action were based on a false estimation of damages, did the letters amount to “improper, oppressive and unreasonable conduct”?

A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes an ‘unwarranted demand with menaces’... ‘Menaces’ are serious and significant threats. The context is important to the assessment of what amounts to a serious and significant threat. A threat to sue a billionaire for £2,000 may not be menacing but a threat to sue someone with little or no means may be serious and significant.

Many of those who received the letters have struggled to find the means to pay, or have had to resort to emergency loans. Given this, do Milne’s “very aggressive” letters (in the words of local MP, Olivia Blake) amount to unwarranted demands with menaces?

We have published Gray’s full advice here, which also includes useful advice for anyone in receipt of letters. 

We asked Andrew Milne for his response to Gray’s opinion, and if he wanted to dispute any of the particulars. We haven’t yet heard back.

Will SYP now act? After we published on Milne, South Yorkshire Police confirmed to us that they were “reviewing” the matter. Three months on, with no official investigation being launched, many of the affected householders have told The Tribune that they believe SYP has decided to quietly drop the case, or pass it on to Action Fraud.

“Scoping exercise”: SYP denied this when we asked them for the latest. They told us: 

“Since the reports relating to Andrew Milne came to light, we have been undertaking an extensive fact-finding and scoping exercise to build up a full picture of the circumstances surrounding the issues raised by a number of leaseholders in Sheffield. This exercise has involved liaising with and gathering information from multiple agencies, and speaking to colleagues in other force areas as well as national specialists… Once this scoping exercise is complete it will be determined if the allegations meet the criminal threshold, and whether SYP is the most appropriate authority to take this matter forward.” 

The Tribune says: The time taken by SYP is perhaps unsurprising: it isn’t the kind of case that they routinely deal with. But householders are understandably getting frustrated, not least as many of them still have to decide how to respond to Milne's letters. 

James Gray has spent months working on a legal assessment and his view carries real weight. A formal investigation needs to be launched without further delay. We’ll keep readers updated.

In other news…

Milne in the dock: As we’ve covered before, Milne has separately been on trial for stalking. These proceedings were adjourned after three days in January due to wranglings over legal procedure. The court reconvened for another three days last week, but even that wasn’t enough time, so it was adjourned again to tomorrow. We’ve spoken to a journalist covering the case who believes things should finally come to a conclusion in the next couple of days. We’ll keep you updated.

Milne on national telly: Meanwhile, last week, Channel 5 took the scandal to a national audience with a really excellent summary of the issues. The link is here — it’s well worth 5 minutes of your time and you might even spot a member of the Tribune team…

Courtroom clash: The 5 News team took a leaf out of The Tribune’s playbook and tried to get Milne for a chat outside Stratford Magistrates Court. He responds by trying to pull their microphone cable out. “Mr Milne, please leave our equipment alone”, says an exasperated Tessa Chapman. 

The most important part of the item, though, is where the team interview a householder who paid Milne £25,000. “Can I ask how you raised the £25,000?” Chapman asks. “We got an emergency loan out,” replies the homeowner. “And then we paid… sorry I’m going to get tearful… and we paid with my partner’s pension.”

Milne in national papers: The Daily Mail has also picked up on the scandal in a broader piece about the stalking case. “Milne, 63, is no stranger to the courts, having been accused of 'bullying, threatening and harassing' by an MP in the Commons for his practice of buying the freeholds of more than 200 properties then using legal threats to make leaseholders buy them back at inflated prices,” they wrote.

Milne in national parliament: The MP that the Mail was referring to is Phil Brickell MP, for Bolton West, another place where Milne has been dispatching letters. Olivia Blake MP, whose constituency contains most of the affected properties in Sheffield, has also spoken up in parliament.

Your Tribune briefing 🗞️

⚽ Last Tuesday’s edition of The Times published a special report about Sheffield Wednesday’s ongoing limbo, detailing concerns about “the conduct of chief administrator Kris Wigfield” and the “suitability of the consortium” hoping to buy the club. A screenshot seen by The Times appears to show Wigfield discussing two bids for the club in a Whatsapp groupchat, flouting confidentiality rules — Wigfield told the paper he was aware of the image but has “no way of knowing whether it is complete, altered, selectively cropped, or accurately reflects the context in which it was supposedly sent”. 

A consortium of three people, led by former professional gambler James Bord, injected £2.5 million into Wednesday after being named the preferred bidder on Christmas Eve but, more than a month later, the EFL has yet to complete checks to see if the trio is suitable to take over. Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust insists that, even if the consortium passes these checks, fans will need more reassurance. “We believe supporters are entitled to hear directly from bidders about their ownership philosophy,” a spokesperson said. “These are matters of transparency and principle; they should not be hidden behind a veil of confidentiality until a bid is complete.”

🚑 The parents of two teenage sisters killed in the Hillsborough disaster are campaigning for the court record to finally reflect the truth about their children’s deaths — yet say South Yorkshire Police are refusing to take the “simple and straightforward” steps that would allow this to happen. The record currently states that Victoria and Sarah Hicks, aged 15 and 19, lost consciousness within 30 seconds, when they were actually alive and suffering for far longer. Their parents Trevor and Jenni will attend parliament today to discuss the situation. Trevor told the press: "Because the courts accepted the police version of events, we were told our daughters didn't suffer. We were told the law could do nothing more for them. That was wrong then, and it's wrong now."

🎭 Dan went to see To Kill a Mockingbird at the Lyceum on Thursday, and came away hugely impressed. The story is still the same classic tale which many will remember studying at school, but has been updated for modern audiences. In particular, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) paints Atticus Finch as a more flawed character and the family’s black maid Calpurnia as a more forthright presence with opinions and a life of her own. The changes make the show just as relevant for our times as Harper Lee’s book and the subsequent film were in the 1960s. The show has finished at the Lyceum now, but if you get a chance to see it anywhere else, I can definitely recommend it. Oh, and there was a nice coincidence. The newspaper in Maycomb, Alabama where the story is set is…The Tribune.

We're looking to write a story about Sheffield Theatres. If you've got connections to the organisation then please get in touch.

The weekly Whitworth ✍️

Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on the weather phenomenon that is currently plaguing Sheffield’s higher reaches — permafog. “The fog in Fulwood and Lodge Moor is getting ridiculous!”, one reader told us via Whatsapp. “I can barely see my kids on the school run. Sinister forces at play I reckon.” We can’t disagree…

Home of the week 🏡

It’s finally happened: a terraced house in Sheffield has gone on the market for £500,000. The four bedroom home on Hunter House Road is “deceptively spacious” and comes with views over Endcliffe Park. However, for that kind of cash we would expect its spaciousness to be tardis-levels of deceptive, and for the views to be of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Things to do 📆

Exhibition 🏫 On now at Western Bank Library is More Than A Degree, an exhibition about 120 years of student life in Sheffield. Whether you’re a current student curious to see how things have changed over the years, a former student rekindling memories of your time here, or someone who wonders what it would be like to be a student at Sheffield, the show has a wealth of stories to inform, surprise, and entertain. The exhibition runs until June.

Talk 💬 On Tuesday, discover the fascinating life of infamous trans-Atlantic Drag King Annie Hindle in this lunchtime talk at Weston Park Museum. When SJ Cooper-Knock and Fiona Moorcroft started researching Hindle’s life for a play, they discovered it was more difficult than they imagined. The talk focuses on the challenges faced by those researching queer historic figures. The hour-long talk begins at 1pm. Admission free (suggested donation £5).

Drama 👻 On Wednesday at the Drama Studio, Not Truly Dead features three tales by the master of the English ghost story M. R. James. In Rats, a holiday is thrown into confusion by something in the neighbouring room, while in An Evening’s Entertainment, a thicket conceals the site of a bloody ritual, and the bookstacks of a library are host to an unnaturally strong smell of dust in The Tractate Middoth. Tickets are £10-£16 and doors open at 7.30pm.

If someone forwarded you this newsletter, click here to sign up to get quality local journalism in your inbox.