Communitypower.Accountable policing.

The Alliance for Police Accountability brings together community organisations, campaigners, policing professionals, academics, policy specialists and people with lived experience to strengthen democratic accountability in policing.

We were formed in response to a long-standing crisis of trust and legitimacy between policing institutions and Black communities. Our work starts from a simple principle: communities most affected by policing should have the knowledge, resources and democratic power to help define the standards by which policing is judged.

We work locally and nationally. We develop practical accountability structures with communities, convene people around major policing issues, produce policy and research, and advocate for reforms that make policing more transparent, responsive and accountable.

Our work combines community organising, evidence, advocacy, policy development and public convening. Each part supports the same goal: building a stronger and more democratic relationship between communities and the institutions that police them.

Our current programme is guided by the APA Policing Accountability Strategy. It sets out how we intend to build durable community accountability infrastructure over the coming years, beginning with strong local foundations and using local evidence to shape national reform.

A major output of this work is the Policing Accountability Framework. The Framework is a practical model that any community can use to establish independent and democratic scrutiny of policing. Within the APA, we use it to guide our work with Black communities and to support the development of locally owned Black Policing Charters.

Birmingham is our first live place-based programme. Working with the Birmingham Race Impact Group and a local Steering Group, we are developing the Birmingham Black Policing Charter as a practical test of how community mandate, evidence and structured scrutiny can operate in practice.

As capacity, local readiness and funding allow, we intend to build on the learning from Birmingham through further work in London, Cardiff and Manchester.

Since our formation, the APA has developed from a national civil society response to failures in police accountability into a programme focused on building practical, community-led alternatives.

Our work has included major conferences on policing and the Black child, the Metropolitan Police after the Casey Review, Black women and policing, and community safety. We have brought civil society organisations together around independent oversight, contributed to national policing reviews, developed safeguarding proposals, and worked with communities to turn evidence and lived experience into concrete policy demands.

The next stage is to strengthen and scale the infrastructure we have begun to build, while protecting the independence, democratic legitimacy and community ownership at the centre of our approach.

1. 2022

   The emerging APA network mobilised community scrutiny around the appointment of the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner and began developing a new model of community-led police accountability.

2. 2023

   The APA formally launched and began building partnerships, local accountability models and a national Black Policing Charter agenda.

3. 2024

   We expanded our safeguarding and public health work, including the Policing and the Black Child conference and subsequent proposals for stronger protections for Black children.

4. 2025

   We convened civil society organisations to develop a shared model for independent community oversight and expanded our national advocacy on policing reform, the Police Race Action Plan and community safety.

5. 2026

   We published the Policing Accountability Framework, began live implementation through the Birmingham Black Policing Charter, completed the Beyond Statements work on Black women and policing, and strengthened our engagement with national police reform.

Our work depends on communities, civil society organisations, researchers, practitioners, funders and institutions that are prepared to engage seriously with independent scrutiny.

Whether you want to contribute evidence, support a local process, partner with us, fund the work or take part in an event, we want to hear from you.