Nazir
Afzal OBE

Nazir Afzal OBE, was Chief Crown Prosecutor for NW England and formerly Director in London. He was Chief Executive of the country’s Police & Crime Commissioners.

During a 30-year career, has prosecuted the most high-profile cases in the country & advised on many others and led nationally on several legal topics including Violence against Women & Girls, child sexual abuse, and honour-based violence. He had responsibility for more than 100,000 prosecutions each year. His prosecutions of the so-called Rochdale grooming gang and hundreds of others were groundbreaking and changed the landscape of child protection.

Nazir is a tutor for several leadership programmes in the public and private sector. He has made presentations to dozens of diverse organisations in this country and abroad. He has given hundreds of interviews in all forms of media. Nazir gives a considerable amount of time to charitable work and is trustee & Patron of several NGOs including ServiceSix, DVAssist, Jan Trust, Samantha Sykes Foundation, Karma Nirvana, Halo Project & SaveraUK and was Chair of the Prince of Wales’ Mosaic Trust.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Central Lancashire and Glyndwyr University, and awarded Honorary Doctorates in Law by the University of Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, Leicester & London South Bank Universities. He has chaired conferences in New York, Madrid, Paris, Norway and Geneva. He has assisted the Governments of Somalia, Ukraine & Pakistan on Rule of Law reform.

Nazir has received many accolades, in 2005, he was awarded an OBE by the Queen for his work. He has also had the honour of being the only lawyer to ever prosecute a case before the Queen. In 2007, he received the UK Government’s Justice Award 2007 and was awarded the Daily Mirror newspaper “People’s award” voted for by readers. Nazir was also selected for the Asian Power 100 along with the Muslim Power 100 list, recognised as one of the 100 most influential leading Muslims and Asians in the UK. He is listed in the Pakistan Power100 which regards him as one of the 100 most influential people of Pakistani origin in the world today. He was Asian Media Group’s “Man of the Year 2012.” Most recently, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Pride of Birmingham awards 2022. He was awarded the first ever “Disruptor for Good” award at the Northern Power Women Awards 2022.

Nazir's impact stretches far beyond the legal profession. He currently serves as Chancellor of the University of Manchester, the largest and most popular university in the UK, and as Chair of The Lowry Theatre, known as the "National Theatre of the North." He also chairs the Church of England National Safeguarding Panel and holds positions with a variety of influential bodies, including the Creative Industries Standards Agency, and until recently, National Police Chiefs Ethics Committee, and the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Nazir is a strategic advisor to the People’s Powerhouse and the innovative tech company Bikal Technologies.

Nazir’s extraordinary work has earned widespread acclaim, with the BBC film Three Girls based on his landmark case, and his impact has been described by the Times as “forensically intelligent” and by the New York Times as “the authentic face of British Justice