Harehills: 'Foundations for renewal' now in place, says policing boss a year after violence in Leeds
The “foundations for renewal” in Harehills are now in place, a top policing boss has said on the anniversary of violent scenes in the east Leeds suburb.
It was a night of chaos on July 18 last year, when crowds were drawn to a disturbance involving police on Luxor Street. As tensions spiralled, a police car was attacked and overturned, before a double-decker bus was set on fire on Foundry Approach, sending flames and smoke into the air.
No injuries were reported, but the incident drew national attention and raised urgent questions about policing, trust, and community cohesion in one of the city’s most diverse areas.
For Alison Lowe, West Yorkshire’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, the events of that night weren’t just a political crisis - they were personal.
“My sister lives there and so do my niece and great niece,” she told the Yorkshire Evening Post. “I was seeing videos from my family - and I was frightened for them. I’m an east Leeds girl and I grew up there.
“I was devastated for the police and the violence they were enduring, and I was devastated for all of the law-abiding people who live peacefully and proudly in Harehills.
“They were being dragged into a terrible situation where they - and their locality - were going to be labelled by the media. I was really sorry to see that.”
Recalling a visit to the area the following day with West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin, Ms Lowe said: “What struck me most was the sense of shock. There is always the potential for things to go wrong and for tensions to ignite, but this seemed to come from nowhere.”
Despite the unrest erupting with little warning, Ms Lowe said it had laid bare deeper issues in the area. As a result, she pointed to work that has gone into rebuilding trust and ensuring similar scenes are never repeated.
An example is the deployment of West Yorkshire Police officers who are also members of the Roma community - as there is a significant Roma population in Harehills - to carry out direct engagement in the community.
“I think that, although there was a growing number of people living in Harehills, no one had spent time working with these people for them to understand what policing in Britain looks like,” she said.
Ms Lowe was keen to stress the police’s response has gone beyond community engagement alone, arguing that a combination of outreach programmes, youth services and targeted support is starting to yield results.
“I feel that all of the foundations for a renewal in Harehills are now in place,” she said.
As the situation escalated last summer and officers came under sustained attack, West Yorkshire Police made the decision to temporarily withdraw from the immediate area.
The retreat was intended to de-escalate tensions, but became a major talking point in the days that followed - with some criticising the force. Ms Lowe insisted that the decision to pull back was the right one.
“I think the police could have been a bit more upfront about what they were doing and why they were doing it,” she admitted. “But the Chief Constable felt that they didn’t want to inflame the situation any more.”
“The police were the ones under attack - and understood that if they weren’t present, it would have stopped. When they pulled back, the violence did start to reduce.”
Ms Lowe said that a police helicopter gave officers a full aerial view of what was happening on the ground throughout the night - and that had the violence been directed towards the public, a different approach would have been taken.
“No member of the public was harmed,” she said. “Of course, it was still devastating that something like this could happen in the community - and I think people were embarrassed that this happened on their doorsteps with the scrutiny of the world’s media suddenly on us.
“But from a policing perspective - apart from the communication which they could’ve capitalised on a bit more - this had a really good outcome.”
Ms Lowe praised the subsequent police investigation that has seen dozens arrested and a significant number of convictions secured. Reflecting on the year that’s passed since the riot, she said the worst is now behind the community.
“Innocent people were asking themselves, ‘Is Harehills the place for me?’” she recalled. “Now that a lot of great work has happened, I’d like to think they’ve since decided that it is.”