Hillsborough disaster timeline: decades seeking justice and change

1989

27 March The South Yorkshire police chief constable, Peter Wright, replaces Ch Supt Brian Mole, the experienced commander of football matches at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium. Wright promotes David Duckenfield in Mole’s place.

15 April Nineteen days after Duckenfield is appointed, 54,000 people attend the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. In the lethal crush, 97 men, women and children are fatally injured.

1 August Lord Justice Taylor’s official report into the disaster emphatically blames police mismanagement of the event and criticises South Yorkshire police for blaming Liverpool supporters instead of accepting responsibility. Wright states that he fully accepts the findings.

1990

30 August The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decides there is insufficient evidence to justify criminal proceedings against anybody from any organisation for any offence arising out of the deaths.

October South Yorkshire police admit they were negligent and failed in their duty of care to the people attending the match, settling civil claims brought by bereaved families and injured people.

19 November First inquest opens in Sheffield, heard by the local coroner Dr Stefan Popper. South Yorkshire police renew their case that drunk supporters who arrived late and ticketless were to blame.

1991

28 March Inquest jury returns a majority verdict of accidental death.

29 October Duckenfield retires on medical grounds, diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

1992

13 January Disciplinary action against Supt Bernard Murray, the police control box commander at Hillsborough, is dropped.

1993

5 November A judicial review application by six representative families to quash the inquest verdict is rejected by Lord Justice McCowan in the divisional court. McCowan rules that the inquest was properly conducted. Families continue to campaign for justice.

1996

5 December ITV broadcasts a drama documentary written by Jimmy McGovern, researched by the journalist Katy Jones, which powerfully highlights the families’ allegations of injustice and a police cover-up.

1997

30 June The New Labour government orders a “scrutiny” of new evidence by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith. It is found that South Yorkshire police changed 164 officers’ accounts of the disaster before sending them to the Taylor inquiry. According to a civil service note that became public in 1997, the then home secretary, Jack Straw, did not believe there was sufficient evidence for a fresh inquiry but said such an assertion had to come from an independent source such as a judge to be “acceptable”. The then prime minister, Tony Blair, had written across the note about setting up a new inquiry: “Why? What is the point?”

1998

13 February Stuart-Smith rejects any grounds for prosecutions or quashing the inquest verdict. Straw accepts that conclusion.

2009

12 April Twenty years after Hillsborough, the Guardian highlights the families’ grievances and complaints of injustice. The then Labour ministers Andy Burnham and Maria Eagle resolve to call for all documents relating to the disaster to be published.

15 April Burnham’s speech to the 20th anniversary memorial service at Anfield is interrupted with calls from the crowd for “justice for the 96”. His call for disclosure is supported by Gordon Brown’s government.

2012

12 September The Hillsborough independent panel, which has reviewed 450,000 documents disclosed to it, publishes its report. Its lead author is Prof Phil Scraton, who has worked since 1989 to document the disaster and miscarriage of justice. The police failings are highlighted, and their campaign to blame supporters further exposed. The Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, makes an apology in parliament to the families. The home secretary, Theresa May, accepts the report and orders a new criminal inquiry into the disaster, Operation Resolve. The Independent Police Complaints Commission launches an investigation into alleged malpractice by the police in the case presented afterwards.

19 December The verdict in the first inquest, of accidental death, is quashed by the lord chief justice, Igor Judge, and two other judges, who find that the inquest was not properly conducted.

2014

31 March New inquests begin in Birchwood, Warrington. Together they last more than two years, the longest case ever heard by a jury in British history.

2016

26 April The inquest jury delivers its verdict. It is asked to answer 14 questions, and concludes that the 96 people who died in the disaster were unlawfully killed due to gross negligence manslaughter by Duckenfield. The 97th victim, Andrew Devine, died in 2021.

“Errors and omissions” by the entire police operation on the day contributed to the causes, the jury finds. Errors and omissions by the South Yorkshire metropolitan ambulance service were also found to have contributed to the disaster.

No behaviour on the part of Liverpool supporters contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles, as alleged by the police. This, at last, comprehensively exonerates the supporters whom the police had blamed for causing the disaster.

Defects in the construction and layout of the stadium contributed to the disaster, the inquest finds, and the stadium’s lack of a valid safety certificate also contributed, as did Sheffield Wednesday FC’s preparation for the match.

On the question of whether the club’s actions on the day of the game were a contributory factor, the jury could not say for sure but said they may have been.

2017

29 June After Operation Resolve, the CPS charges Duckenfield, the police officer in command of the match, with manslaughter by gross negligence. The charge relates to 95 of the people who died at Hillsborough. No charge could be brought in relation to the death of the 96th victim, Tony Bland, due to the passage of time before he died, in 1993.

Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday club secretary and safety officer at the time of the disaster, is charged with two counts of breaching his duties under safety legislation.

1 November Bishop James Jones publishes a report commissioned by the home secretary, May, aimed at learning lessons from the Hillsborough families’ ordeal and preventing future cover-ups and miscarriages of justice after public tragedies. It makes recommendations for widespread reforms in 25 “points of learning” including a charter establishing a “duty of candour” for the police and public authorities, to openly and transparently assist with investigations and inquiries after a major incident.

2019

14 January Duckenfield’s trial begins at Preston crown court. The 75-year-old stands trial alongside Mackrell, with both men pleading not guilty to the charges.

Opening the prosecution’s case, Richard Matthews QC says: “Duckenfield’s criminal responsibility for the deaths … flows from his gross failure to discharge his personal responsibility as match commander.” Ben Myers QC, setting out Duckenfield’s defence, said he was being “singled out unfairly”.

3 April The jury fails to return a verdict on Duckenfield’s charge, after deliberating for eight days. Mackrell is found guilty, by a majority of 10-2, of breaching his legal duty to take reasonable care at work for people’s safety, in relation to the allocation of turnstiles for the match.

Matthews tells the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, that the CPS will seek a retrial for Duckenfield on the same charge. Mackrell is later fined £6,500 after his conviction.

25 June Just over a month after the 30th anniversary of the disaster, Openshaw rules that Duckenfield will face a retrial, to begin at Preston crown court in October.

7 October Duckenfield’s retrial begins. Proceedings are relayed live to the Cunard building in Liverpool to allow survivors and families of the victims to attend more easily.

Related: Government rejects ‘Hillsborough law’ central to campaign by victims’ families

28 November Duckenfield is found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter, after the jury spends three days considering its verdict. Openshaw had earlier told the 10-person jury he would accept a majority verdict, on which at least nine of the 10 jurors agreed.

2021

25 May The trial of two former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s solicitor at the time of the disaster, on charges of perverting the course of public justice, relating to amending officers’ statements after the disaster, is stopped by the judge and the three men are acquitted.

4 June South Yorkshire and West Midlands police agree a settlement with more than 600 people to compensate them for the false police campaign aimed at avoiding responsibility for the disaster and blaming the victims instead, which bereaved families have always said was a cover-up.

The forces will pay compensation to families whose relatives were among the men, women and children unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, and to survivors of the disaster, for trauma and psychiatric damage.

21 July A coroner rules that Andrew Devine, 55, died due to the severe brain damage he suffered in the crush at Hillsborough, and that therefore he is, 32 years later, the 97th person to have been unlawfully killed.

2023

6 December The government responds to Bishop James Jones’s report, with apologies from ministers for having taken six years to do so. It signs and adopts the charter as recommended by Jones, and a duty of candour is to be introduced into police officers’ codes of conduct.

However the government rejects the families’ proposals for a “Hillsborough law”, that would enforce a duty of candour as a legal responsibility, and provide bereaved families with equal funding to public authorities for legal representation at inquests.