Police errors contributed to suicide of tormented mother Fiona Pilkington

Police errors and inaction were partly responsible for driving a vulnerable single mother to kill herself and her severely disabled daughter after years of abuse from youths, an inquest found today.

Returning a verdict of suicide on Fiona Pilkington, 38, and unlawful killing for her 18-year-old daughter, Francecca, whose bodies were found in a blazing car on a layby in October 2007, the jury decided that the police action "contributed" to the deaths, notably the failure of officers to connect dozens of separate calls for assistance.

The jury heard Pilkington contacted police on no fewer than 33 occasions in seven years in which youths throwing stones and shouting abuse had kept her a virtual prisoner in her home in Barwell, near Hinckley in Leicestershire. Asked how police were responsible, the jury said: "Calls were not linked or prioritised."

Tonight the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was launching an investigation into the way the "distressing" case was handled, in particular, how seriously the police responded to Pilkington's calls for help.

The verdict also held the local council partly accountable for failing for years to take action against the young gangs, and criticised the county social services department for not referring Pilkington for professional help after she said she felt suicidal.

The coroner, Olivia Davison, said she would write to both the Ministry of Justice and Hinckley and Bosworth borough council, which was responsible with police for tackling antisocial behaviour in the area. "I am concerned about the evidence I have received in this inquest about the process for gathering and recording information from victims of antisocial abuse," Davison said. Separately, the jury blamed poor information sharing between the police and councils for contributing to the deaths, but also noted that Pilkington had neither "sought nor accepted" help on occasions.

Pilkington's blue Austin Maestro was found in flames on a layby by the side of the A47 near the family's home on the night of 23 October, 2007. Inside the car, which had been set ablaze with petrol, were the severely burned bodies of Pilkington and Francecca. The inquest was told that Pilkington probably took the family's pet rabbit in the car as well to soothe Francecca, who had a mental age of about four.

The six-day hearing was told a mass of evidence, at times deeply harrowing, of the way in which gangs of teenagers and children, some as young as 10, had kept Pilkington, Francecca and Pilkington's son, Anthony, who has milder learning difficulties, "under siege".

It also learned of the increasingly desperate attempts of a depressed, timid single mother with borderline learning difficulties herself to attract the sustained attention of officialdom to her plight.

Pilkington's 1930s semi-detached house, where she had lived for 15 years, was pelted with stones, while youths smashed bottles outside and jumped into the front hedge. On some weekend nights young people hung outside the house for hours on end, shouting taunts and insults.

In a harassment diary briefly kept by Pilkington in the year of her death, she recounted shouts outside her living room window from 11.30pm until the early hours. The entry ends: "Sat in the dark until 2.30am, stressed out."

One child of a particular family, named at the inquest as Family A, was identified as being heavily involved, with the inquest hearing that that family remained a menace to neighbours "to this day".

Apart from contacting police – she did so 13 times in the year of her death – Pilkington discussed matters with two antisocial behaviour officers from her borough council, dealt with a series of social workers and even wrote to her MP.

But no one was convicted of a crime, or even arrested before her death, although the identities of the main culprits were known to police and council officials.

The inquest was left with an increasing impression of organisational haphazardness – even chaos – with different agencies meeting regularly but failing to share information or establish basic facts.

Although much of the abuse centred on the taunts about the children's disabilities, police failed to recognise it as a hate crime rather than simple antisocial behaviour, which would have made it a far higher priority.

The inquest heard that at the time of Pilkington's death, Leicestershire police had not implemented the Home Office guidance on hate crimes issued two years earlier.

Hinckley and Bosworth council's community officers visited Pilkington but never learned until after she was dead that anyone in the family was disabled.

An official who dealt with her case in 2004 moved to Australia and his successor never learned of the family's problems for three years. Case files went missing or were destroyed.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, called the case "shocking" and said police and councils had "some hard lessons to learn about past failures, which will be the subject of further investigations".

Responding to the verdict, the Conservative shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, said: "This case has horrified the nation, and the police claim that they aren't responsible for tackling antisocial behaviour was completely shocking.

"We need real action to stamp out antisocial behaviour, to get more police out of police stations and on to the streets, and to demonstrate to law-abiding citizens that the criminal justice system really is on their side."

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