About Us

Who we are

Darra Singh OBE (Chair)

Simon Marcus

Heather Rabbatts CBE

Baroness Maeve Sherlock OBE

Our task

Our remit was to listen to views of communities and victims about the riots. We launched a call for evidence on 16 September 2011. Since then, we have visited 21 areas and spoken with thousands of people who were affected by the riots and some who were not.

We have sought views via radio phone-ins, Twitter, newspaper articles, our website and blog and in public meetings in some of the worst affected areas. Further information about who we are and the areas we visited can be found in the Appendices.

We know there has already been a great deal of thinking within Government and more widely about the riots. We believe it is important that the voices of victims and communities can contribute to the debate. This is why we are now publishing our interim report 10 weeks after our call for evidence. It aims to reflect the views and opinions we have heard so far in order to draw together emerging themes, before we explore these issues in more depth.

This report is written from a national perspective and does not aim to analyse the riots at a local level. Each riot area had its own ‘DNA’ and we can’t reflect them all in depth in this report. Many areas which were affected by the riots have established their own panels to focus on local issues. The purpose of this report is to capture the overarching findings, while highlighting important local differences.

The structure of this report

This report is split into three sections:

In the first we set out the facts, outlining what happened where and who was involved.
In the second section, we consider what triggered the riots, why they spread and the motivations of those involved. We also outline some immediate recommendations based on what we have heard.
In the final section, we outline the areas we intend to focus on in the next phase of our work and set out further important questions we think need to be answered.

We hope that by setting out the facts clearly, our report will address some common misconceptions about the riots. This is important in itself – tensions between different communities, areas and groups can be needlessly inflamed by myths and untruths.