What has happened to the 2022 Leicester disorder inquiry?

Rita Patel said she was trapped in a restaurant in Belgrave Road as the violence unfolded and gave evidence to the Leicester review.

The community activist, who was a Labour city councillor at the time, said she was “really concerned” the review had still not been published.

“A lot of people in Leicester believed that because communities had always got on harmoniously, it was always going to be like that,” she said. “It’s quite easy for us to sleep-walk again into a situation like that.

“It’s a folly to think we can just forget about it and carry on. Unless we learn the lessons of the issues created by that perfect storm, we’re doomed to it happening again.”

Suleman Nagdi, from the Federation of Muslim Organisations, said publishing the review would not serve any useful purpose, and he was now focusing on building bridges between Muslim and Hindu schools.

The previous government said the panel would report back their findings and recommendations, external for Leicester and national government late in 2023, and Austin said they aimed to publish them in the October of that year.

But his report was not released before the Conservatives lost the 2024 general election, so it went into the new Labour government’s in-tray.

Over the past few months, the BBC has repeatedly asked officials when Austin’s report will be published.

In response, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has pointed us to the following parliamentary response, external in November 2025.

“The government is reviewing the panel’s findings and recommendations and will respond in due course,” it said.

But will this response involve releasing those details to the public?

Leicestershire and Rutland’s police and crime commissioner, Reform UK’s Rupert Matthews, told the BBC he has heard nothing about publication, and fears it is being “brushed under the carpet”.

Matthews said the report was absolutely crucial, because of “enormously controversial” tensions between newly arrived Hindu workers from Daman in India, and Muslim residents who settled decades ago.

“It was being fed by religion, ethnicity, geo-politics going on in the Indian subcontinent between India and Pakistan and other factors, so it doesn’t fit the [usual] narrative.

“Publish it. If you don’t face up to awkward questions, they’re only going to get worse and fester,” he said.

Matthews added Leicestershire Police would have been conducting murder inquiries if seriously injured victims had not received such good hospital treatment.

He said the Leicester review was “hugely expensive”, and the force had to divert hundreds of hours of officer and staff time away from policing Leicestershire and Rutland.

The police arrested dozens of men in the wake of the disorder, and said most were from Leicester and Birmingham.

More than 30 people were eventually convicted of crimes ranging from making threats to kill and assaulting an emergency worker, to public order and driving offences.

It emerged one Daman man jailed for a possessing an offensive weapon, with marchers chanting Hindu slogans, was from an Indian Christian family.

It followed weeks of escalating tension over issues ranging from the celebration of religious festivals and a cricket match, to car convoys that were interpreted as a provocation.