Trust and reconciliation

Below you will find further examples of local and national work ongoing across policing and the wider criminal justice system in this workstream to deliver an anti-racist police service.

We will continue to share promising practice and ideas we come across, as well as encouraging forces to submit their initiatives onto the College of Policing’s Practice Bank so these can undergo an evaluation process. For more information please contact the relevant force or email our team.

The Practice Bank is made up of shared interventions that have been implemented by crime reduction and community safety organisations, including policing. These have been used to address specific crime problems or organisational change. 

Bedfordshire Police established a community leaders forum to talk about their communities and help identify how the police can work to build trust and confidence. 

Cumbria Constabulary came together with multiple partner agencies to deliver Operation Respect, a broad initiative aimed at encouraging pride and cohesion in different communities.

Hertfordshire Constabulary's positive action team organised a community engagement event at an Afro-Caribbean barber shop, promoting police transparency, trust-building and inclusivity.

Humberside Police has combined data and feedback through increased use of its Neighbourhood Alert platform to target police activity and improve relationships with local communities.

The force also ran the Peel Street Project, an intensive programme of engagement in a particular area which used multiple tactics to build confidence with diverse communities.

Merseyside Police has effectively used participatory budgeting to increase engagement with communities and broaden the number of different groups it works with.

The Metropolitan Police has used innovation hubs to engage and problem solve with stakeholders and community representatives.

Staffordshire Police is using a PowerApp solution and a Power BI dashboard to record and evaluate community engagement. 

West Mercia Police has used a model of intensive engagement to improve community engagement through advice, training, support and coordination for police and partners.

These initiatives were highlighted in our practice brochure published in October 2025. You can read the brochure online for more information about each initiative.

In 2024, British Transport Police established the Aya Scholarship in partnership with the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London. Funded by the Unclaimed Property Fund, the scholarship covers full tuition and associated costs for a student of Black heritage to study Law.

The Young People Race Inclusion Forum sits within the Hertfordshire Constabulary’s Police Race Action Plan (PRAP) governance structure. The Inclusion Forum was formed in December 2024 and currently has 50 members from across Hertfordshire. The members are aged between 14 and 17, all define their ethnicity as Black, and they represent each local authority area in Hertfordshire. The forum is run by the constabulary in partnership with the county council’s services for young people.

Kent Police's ‘I See You’ programme was developed in collaboration between local officers and staff alongside its IAG Chair as a proactive means of engagement with the Black community. The programme aims to cover the four workstreams of the Police Race Action Plan. 

Police Scotland has recruited three ‘Community Relationship Specialists’. Their role is to support Police Scotland’s focus on building relationships with and within minoritised communities which will help shape service delivery, develop Police Scotland’s Black and African Engagement plan and improve public trust and confidence. One of the team has been specifically recruited to help develop relationships within Black and African communities and has helped develop key relationships to support constructive dialogue between Police Scotland and the community. This has been observed during a number of incidents where local policing has been able to lean into these connections to build trust within the community.

South Wales Police has expanded its scrutiny panels model to become engagement and outreach opportunities allowing them to help the force bridge the gap between police and communities, and particularly young people. The new format scrutiny panels have been delivered at a mosque in one of the Valleys areas, an African Community Mental Health Support group in Swansea, a meeting of the Windrush Elders in Cardiff and at a high school in Cardiff.

West Midlands Police brought together over 400 school aged young people who had an interest in football. This has led to an ongoing relationship between the force and some of the young people involved.

The projects below have been developed by police forces and other agencies. While not formally endorsed by the plan, hopefully they encourage ideas and discussion among those looking to deliver the plan's objectives, as well as showing the breadth of activity happening in policing.

This guide clearly sets out the best available evidence on public confidence in the police, as well as the policing activities that are most likely to have an impact.

Avon and Somerset Police’s Race Matters programme has delivered innovative communications and engagement activity. Bristol city poet Miles Chambers’s poem I Want to be Seen reflects this work. The force has created the Race Matters Community Network, a group of people from the area’s diverse communities, who have signed up to be actively involved in shaping the work. Through the network it has introduced an informing, consulting and co-creating partnership to help shape some of the force’s policies. A youth scrutiny panel has been set up to collect feedback on recent stop and search cases, while the force also worked with youth organisation Creative Power Town. The resulting film ‘Unjust Stop’ explores rights around stop and search and provides a channel for young people to explore how it feels when they are unlawfully stopped and searched.

Derbyshire Constabulary has launched a mentoring programme involving leaders from the Black community mentoring some of its senior officers. The programme has been designed to be professionally challenging around everyday matters of race that impact society.

West Midlands Police commissioned an artist in residence to look at new and creative ways of addressing community trauma and bias through its Barriers to Bridges project.

Lancashire Police has developed the Peoples Voices programme. The programme is about listening and having authentic, honest conversations with local communities to allow policing to tailor our service to meet the needs of local communities. These sessions have been recorded with community voices for key themes such as stop and search and hate crime, and then been made widely available to staff.

National and local work is underway looking at how to measure trust and confidence in policing more effectively, including for Black communities at a local level. This includes using the Neighbourhood Alert platform and local surveying, such as in Avon and Somerset.

Police in Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Thames Valley have established their own independent community panels to oversee and input their thoughts specifically into local delivery of the Police Race Action Plan.

Gloucestershire Constabulary has established a community legitimacy panel. The panel is made up of a variety of people of all ages from an ethnic minority background who come together to provide independent advice to the police. The group complements the force's six existing independent advisory groups.

Kent Police has launched its 'I See You' programme in the north of the county. It has been designed in collaboration between the police and the community and gives a framework for police to follow to introduce the plan and discuss it with different communities. It also supports police officer CPD.

The force also has its More than the Badge podcast which goes behind the scenes of policing, including this brilliant episode with Dr Stuart Lawrence talking about PRAP.

Merseyside Police has run a series of workshops for young people from Black communities in partnership with BAME Hub UK and Powerful Beyond All Measure.

The Metropolitan Police has developed a youth advisory group under the London Race Action Plan. This is part of wider partnership work with The Prince’s Trust.

The Mayor of London is developing a youth forum to provide a voice for young people in the criminal justice process, through its youth social action programme.

North Wales Police hold quarterly Race Stakeholder Group meetings. They provide Black and other global majority stakeholders for the force with updates on hate crime and stop and search statistics, as well as a forum through which to share their views on how the area is policed.

West Midlands Police and the Police Uplift Programme worked with creative agency TapIn on the Let’s Talk About Policing project, which explored ideas and techniques for how policing could communicate and engage most effectively with young people, with a particular focus on those from Black communities. The project report is available to read on the Knowledge Hub.

Several forces have developed teams to specifically focus on delivering engagement with diverse communities, such as the Avon and Somerset outreach team, Devon and Cornwall Police's diverse communities team and Bedfordshire Police’s community cohesion team.

Thames Valley Police and its PCC has completed a major review of its community scrutiny and advice functions, to develop a more robust and transparent approach.

West Yorkshire Police is doing lots of innovative work to increase the involvement of communities in the plan. It facilitated a meeting of a youth scrutiny panel in Bradford, where panel members aged between 15 and 19 reviewed incidents of stop and searches involving young people, and provided their views and feedback. It is engaging with local staff associations for Black employees, developing links with local colleges and universities and taking part in things like podcasts and radio interviews with local stations. 

This research aims to enhance trauma-informed police practice with people from marginalised communities, to improve service delivery and influence perceptions of police legitimacy and improve trust and confidence.

Through an examination of key principles, such as safety, trustworthiness, cultural competence, and empowerment, this article highlights how trauma-informed care can be integrated into police work to enhance the well-being of all involved.

The National Association of Independent Advisory Groups (NAIAG) is a national network of local force IAG members aiming to share practice locally and act as a reference point for national work.

The Crown Prosecution Service works with diverse communities locally and nationally to shape policy. This includes through community accountability forums, its disproportionality advisory group and as well as local scrutiny and involvement panels.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct also has stakeholder engagement groups such as its race discrimination national advisory group and a youth panel.