⟡ The Cease-and-Desist of the Desperate ⟡
“Please stop documenting our conduct — it’s creating liability.”
Filed: 11 June 2025
Reference: SWANK/WCC/RETALIATION-THREAT-CND-50000261
📎 Download PDF – 2025-06-11_SWANK_WCC_CeaseAndDesistThreat.pdf
Threat of injunction issued by Westminster legal team in response to lawful documentation and complaints by litigant parent.
⟡ Chromatic v Westminster: On the Criminalisation of Record-Keeping by the Watched ⟡
Westminster City Council, cease and desist, injunction threat, legal intimidation, safeguarding retaliation, strategic silencing, YouTube documentation
I. What Happened
On 11 June 2025, Westminster City Council issued a cease and desist letter to Polly Chromatic (legal name: Noelle Annee Simlett), accusing her of “intimidation” and “harassment” for publicly documenting social workers’ conduct during active safeguarding proceedings.
The letter threatens to seek a County Court injunction and pursue personal costs in excess of £5,000 unless she ceases lawful communications, stops filming council visits, and removes her videos from public platforms. The demand is made while simultaneously acknowledging that a Stage 2 statutory complaint — and a live Ombudsman referral — are ongoing.
The letter was issued by Michaela Smeaton, Principal Solicitor at Bi-borough Legal Services, invoking the Pre-action Protocol for Civil Claims, while conveniently ignoring the very public function of the documentation in question.
II. What the Threat Establishes
⟡ A coordinated retaliation against a disabled parent asserting evidentiary control
⟡ Silencing via injunction threat, rather than resolution via redress
⟡ Institutional hostility to transparency — the outrage is not what happened, but that it was seen
⟡ Deflection-by-defamation warning, meant to deter public documentation without addressing public harm
⟡ Misuse of “resource” framing, weaponising admin convenience against lived access needs
This was not legal notice. It was a declaration of institutional vanity.
III. Why SWANK Logged It
Because there is no greater institutional confession than a cease and desist over documentation. This is what it looks like when the record works — when naming misconduct becomes more threatening than committing it. Westminster’s move was not about law. It was about optics. And SWANK will not forfeit optics. We print them. We publish them. We frame them.
This wasn’t about safeguarding staff. It was about safeguarding reputation.
IV. Violations & Failures
Article 10, Human Rights Act 1998 – Right to freedom of expression
Article 6, Human Rights Act 1998 – Access to legal process
Equality Act 2010 – Discriminatory targeting of written communication access
Public Sector Ombudsman Protocol – Interference with complaint process
Potential breach of CPR PD 3A – vexatiousness cannot be claimed to silence dissent
V. SWANK’s Position
This wasn’t safeguarding. It was suppression.
This wasn’t about safety. It was about silencing.
SWANK does not accept the use of council stationery as a weapon of reputational panic.
We do not accept injunctions designed to protect bad PR, not public interest.
And we will never, under any threat, remove lawful documentation from public view.
What they call harassment, we call archival hygiene.
⟡ This Dispatch Has Been Formally Archived by SWANK London Ltd. ⟡
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This is not a blog.
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Filed with velvet contempt, preserved for future litigation.
Because evidence deserves elegance.
And retaliation deserves an archive.
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