Biography – Dr Alan Billings, South Yorkshire Police & Crime Commissioner
Dr Alan Billings is the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire. He was elected in October 2014, and re-elected in May 2016 and May 2021. Before that he has been a priest and an academic.
Dr Billings became Commissioner in the wake of the child sexual exploitation scandals in Rotherham in 2014 and as the Hillsborough inquests were drawing to a close. He established a ‘Victims, Survivors and their Families’ panel to help South Yorkshire Police understand better the nature of grooming and exploitation. He has sought to reach out to the families of the 96 unlawfully killed at Hillsborough and the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign. He set up an independent Ethics Panel to increase public trust and confidence in the way police officers carry out their duties and he commissioned an inspection of the force across South Yorkshire to ensure that no cases of child sexual exploitation have been missed.
Dr Billings was a board member of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, which oversees the criminal justice system for the under 18s. He was a Schools Adjudicator and a board member of the England Committee of the Big Lottery Fund.
He has been the Director of the Centre for Ethics and Religion at Lancaster University. He has taught ethics to military personnel, including chaplains.
During the 1980s Dr Billings was Deputy Leader of Sheffield City Council. He served as a Church of England Parish Priest in four parishes, including spells in inner-city Sheffield and in the mining community of Beighton. He has also trained clergy at two theological colleges – Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxford (Anglican), where he was Vice Principal, and The Queen’s College, Birmingham (ecumenical), where he was the acting Principal.
Dr Billings has written several books including ‘Secular Lives, Sacred Hearts: the role of the church in a time of no religion’; ‘Making God Possible: the role of ordained ministry’; ‘God and Community Cohesion: Help or Hindrance?’; ‘Lost Church’; and ‘The Dove, the Fig Leaf and the Sword: why Christianity changes its mind about war’.
He is married to Veronica, a former member of the European Parliament. He has two sons and four grandchildren.