Chief Constable Peter Fahy believes getting tougher with domestic violence offenders is the key to avoiding a similar tragedy.

He said lessons had been learned, but added: “We should take a harder line and be more prepared to lock them up.

“There were complexities in this case. At one point Clare allowed him back in; at one point she didn’t want him to go into custody.

“The difficulty is we can arrest someone, interview them, and put them in front of a court for what they have done, but it is not much of an assessment of what the person is about.”

GMP vowed to improve risk assessment of vulnerable domestic violence victims with a new 27-section form for officers to complete.

But Mr Fahy said: “On the whole, it is still a fairly untrained officer filling in a form. The only thing you can do is to keep a person in custody long enough to do a proper assessment.

“I know psychologists and probation officers will not always get it right, but we need somebody to make an in-depth assessment to say what an individual is about.

“A proper assessment about how likely someone is to go and kill is what is missing.”

Asst Chief Constable Terry Sweeney, who has responsibility for domestic abuse, said GMP’s failings could not have prevented Clare's death.

He added: “The report has found that there were some flaws in our intelligence systems and it is clear that some officers need to learn more about how to deal with the extremely complex issue of risk-assessing vulnerable people. We’re sorry about those failings and are doing what we can to make changes.”