A CIVILIAN investigator and former police officer has been jailed for supplying confidential information to a private investigator.

Robert Mackenzie, aged 51, of Gipsy Road, Welling, had pleaded not guilty to two charges of criminal misconduct.

Mackenzie worked both as a serving officer at Plumstead police station and, after his retirement, as a civilian investigator at Bexleyheath police station.

Private investigator, Robert Rankin, aged 58, of Jessup Close, Plumstead, was also found guilty of two counts of aiding and abetting criminal misconduct.

At a retrial at Croydon Crown Court, the jury heard Mackenzie had accessed information from the police national computer and criminal intelligence system to provide information to Rankin about criminal offences, criminal associates of Rankin and vehicles linked to Rankin's work as a private investigator.

Judge Timothy Stow QC accepted there had been no financial gain from the disclosures and no criminal investigation was compromised.

Mackenzie, who was previously called before a Met Police disciplinary hearing for failing to disclose he had been in touch with a journalist while working as an officer on the Jill Dando murder case, was jailed for 18 months.

He will also forfeit more than half his police pension. Rankin was sentenced to nine months in jail.