A POLICE force which apologised to the victims of Jimmy Savile and his council leader friend, is addressing its failings, a report has concluded.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) said North Yorkshire Police had gone a long way to improving its historic records, but said it could do more to share local information with other forces through the Police National Database.

In December, the force apologised to victims of Savile and the former Scarborough mayor Peter Jaconelli, after an internal investigation found that had they both been alive, there would have been enough evidence for officers to prosecute them.

At the time, Assistant Chief Constable Paul Kennedy said the investigation showed "no evidence of misconduct" within North Yorkshire Police, but there had been "organisational failure" around how police staff and officers were tasked to examine files.

HMIC said an inspection of the force found a team of eight police staff were working through half a million hard copy records, disposing of paper records where appropriate, and a further two staff, under the supervision of the force records manager, were reviewing electronic records.

Inspectors found information stored on the force's internal system - known as Niche - were graded and reviewed within acceptable timescales "under normal circumstances", and a growing backlog had been tackled.

The report also found: "A concerted effort has been made over the last 12 months to reduce the number of unprocessed records on Niche from 600 to fewer than 100 reports."

Inspectors also looked at work done by the force to match up records within the system of people who have come to police attention on numerous occasions, and found "at the time of inspection, there were in excess of 32,000 duplicate records and this figure was increasing".