National lead for Counter Terrorism set to retire in March

Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner and the UK’s national lead for counter terrorism policing, has announced his retirement.

AC Rowley began his role as head of National Counter Terror Policing one day before ISIS declared their ‘caliphate’, and has overseen the national response to all subsequent terror attacks,  at the forefront of driving forward UK policing efforts to counter and mitigate the threat from Daesh as well as from other terrorist groups and violent extremist threats, including working with MI5 and other intelligence agencies to successfully stop 23 attacks since the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013 – including 10 since March 2017. The transformation he has led has enabled CT officers to double the number of arrests made as they work to counter the terrorist threat – in the last year there were 460 arrests. Mr Rowley led policing through the tragic events of 2017, where all of these capabilities were deployed and robustly tested and found to have saved lives.

AC Rowley will continue to lead Specialist Operations and the national CT Policing network until March where upon his successor will continue this critical national security role. The process for his replacement will begin in due course.