‘We are determined to learn’: police chiefs apologise for Hillsborough failures – video

The national body for police chief constables has issued an official apology for the police failures that led to the unlawful killing of 97 people in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. 

Martin Hewitt, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said the force would take steps to ensure ‘no further families suffer in the way that those from Hillsborough have’. 

He said every force signed a charter for bereaved families in 2021 that requires police organisations to acknowledge mistakes with ‘openness’ and ‘candour’ after a public tragedy, and not ‘seek to defend the indefensible’, as South Yorkshire police were accused of doing after the 1989 disaster