THE Cheshire Coroner said there is a ‘lacuna’ between the police and probation service when accepting responsibility for taking witness statements about non-criminal licence breaches that could recall prisoners.

Nicholas Rheinberg told Nicola Sutton's inquest today: “It seems to me there is the potential for a lacuna. (The probation service) don’t investigate and police have no power of arrest when it’s not a criminal offence.

“There is a gap in provisions as to who might see it as their duty to take a statement.”

The inquest heard that a host of opportunities had arisen to recall killer Barry Stone to prison for breaches of his licence but the probation service failed to seize them.

Jury members were told that Nicola and Lynn Sutton’s sighting of Stone driving in an exclusion zone shortly after his release was not taken seriously by probation because they did not give a written statement.

The court was told It appeared that offender manager James Lawler was suspicious after an alleged incident where he believed Nicola had mistakenly spotted Stone while he was in prison believing it was insufficient evidence to put before the parole board.

It also emerged that Stone could have been forced to spend extra days in jail after the prison service found him to be involved in drug-taking activity while in jail.

In addition, Stone breached his licence conditions by not living in the designated address and he received a warning letter after failure to attend an extra probation appointment put in place to ensure he did not follow Nicola abroad to Ibiza - as he had done the previous year where he subjected her to more violent attacks.

Prior to Stone’s release Nicola’s woman safety officer, Julie Gibbons, wrote a report detailing her concerns that Stone would re-offend and for a raft of measures to be put in place, which did to happen.

It read: “He has carried out gratuitous violence towards the victim without any regard for her well-being. There is a strong likelihood he would seek revenge and carry out further attacks.”

But Mr Lawler, who wrote Stone’s licence conditions, did not see this report until after Nicola’s murder.

He said: “Mr Stone appeared motivated to address his offending. He said he had no intention of rekindling the relationship and wanted to complete work to prevent further violence in the future.

“I believe the conditions put in place were adequate to protect the public and specific victims.”