Oluwaseye Olajide
Introduction
Oluwaseye Olajide was a police constable with the Metropolitan Police, collar number P253459, based at Charing Cross police station. On 5 October 2023 he sat the online sergeant’s promotion examination in the bedroom of a fellow officer’s flat, with former PC Oliver Fellowes present throughout, and then stayed in the same small room while Fellowes sat the identical paper immediately afterwards. In July 2026 a Metropolitan Police misconduct panel found that both men had attempted to gain an unfair advantage in breach of the standard of honesty and integrity, ruled the conduct gross misconduct, and dismissed Olajide without notice. Fellowes, who had already left the force, would have been dismissed had he still been serving.
Background Information
Olajide served as a police constable with the Metropolitan Police and had acted up in the sergeant’s role, giving him a personal stake in passing the promotion exam; he had failed the same exam in 2022. The sergeant’s examination is an online test that candidates must complete on their own, with no one else present in the room, and candidates sign declarations at the outset promising not to gain or attempt to gain any unfair advantage and not to help or accept help from anyone else during or after the exam. According to the panel, Olajide arranged to sit the October 2023 exam alongside fellow Charing Cross officer Oliver Fellowes, who had left the force by the time of the hearing.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Misconduct findings, not criminal convictions. The findings below come from a Metropolitan Police misconduct panel chaired by former Commander Katie Lilburn, which found the allegations proven on the balance of probabilities. They are regulatory adjudications rather than court judgments, and no criminal charge was brought against either officer.
On 5 October 2023 Olajide began the online sergeant’s examination at a private residential address shortly after 10am. Former PC Fellowes remained in the small bedroom throughout Olajide’s sitting, which ran from 10:06am to just after 1pm according to exam data. Ten minutes after Olajide finished, Fellowes began the same examination, with the questions presented in the exact same order, while Olajide stayed in the room for the whole of Fellowes’s sitting. Both officers had signed integrity declarations beforehand, undertaking to preserve the integrity of the exam, not to help or accept help, and not to discuss or divulge its contents.
In evidence, Olajide admitted he might have read some of the exam questions aloud and accepted that Fellowes, who moved around the room at times, could have seen the questions on his screen. He also confirmed that he consulted textbooks and revision notes during his own exam, which the panel found would have given Fellowes advance warning of the topics arising. The panel concluded that sitting the exams consecutively in the same room created a six-hour period in which each candidate had a potential assistant present, and described the arrangement as “inherently unfair and unethical”. While it was not established that either officer received a specific answer or obtained an actual, tangible advantage, the panel found on the balance of probabilities that both had attempted to gain an unfair advantage through the circumstances in which they chose to sit the exams.
The panel also rejected Olajide’s account of the pair’s preparation. In his written responses he had claimed the two revised together beforehand and created a shared set of notes, but in live evidence he said their only joint revision session took place immediately before the exam; the panel found the written account misleading and deliberately untruthful, and found his conduct dishonest applying the test in Ivey v Genting Casinos. Fellowes did not attend the hearing and submitted no evidence; the panel directed that his non-attendance was not to be regarded as an admission, and based its findings on the agreed evidence. Having considered a no-case-to-answer submission made on Olajide’s behalf — whose ruling the panel later clarified in a written note, offering his counsel the opportunity to make further submissions or recall him — the panel found the allegations proven and breached the standard of honesty and integrity.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The matter came to the Metropolitan Police’s attention in March 2024 and was heard at a public misconduct hearing from 6 to 8 July 2026, before a panel chaired by former Commander Katie Lilburn with independently-assessed panel members Yvonne Walsh and Karen Townsend. The panel found the officers had wilfully disregarded the exam declaration and rules, and identified aggravating factors including malign intent for personal gain, significant deviation from exam instructions, and the expectations placed on potential role models. Both officers’ conduct was found to amount to gross misconduct, so serious that dismissal was justified. The hearing and its outcome were reported by Misconduct999, which covers police misconduct proceedings.
Current Status
Olajide was dismissed without notice. The panel ruled out a final written warning as insufficient, finding it would not mark the seriousness of the dishonesty proven nor deter others from repeating the behaviour, that his proven dishonesty would significantly curtail his operational functions going forward, and that his proven conduct was not conducive to the duties of a serving officer within the Metropolitan Police. The panel ordered publication of its decision under the 2020 Regulations, and the chair’s finding and outcome was published on the Metropolitan Police’s website in August 2026. Fellowes, who had already left the force, was found to have committed gross misconduct, the panel concluding he would have been dismissed had he still been serving.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Olajide’s policing career ended with dismissal without notice after around three years of otherwise good service, cutting short his path to a rank he had already acted up to. The panel found that an officer holding the rank of sergeant without the genuine requisite qualification could not be trusted to give orders at that level, and that proven dishonesty would have curtailed his operational functions even had he remained. Mitigation including medical and occupational health reports, character references and the brief duration of the conduct was considered but given limited weight against the seriousness of the dishonesty found.