The 1964 Police Act formalised the tripartite system of police governance that had emerged in a piecemeal fashion during the nineteenth century and sought to establish the areas of responsibility for each of the three parties who were responsible for the conduct of police affairs. This chapter will focus on the tensions that arose after 1964 in connection with the allocation of responsibilities for police affairs. A key concern was the determination of police priorities. Chief constables insisted that such matters were their responsibility, whereas local political representatives in some areas that were associated with the Labour Party’s ‘urban left’ insisted that such matters ought to be determined by (or on behalf of) local people. Differences of opinion on this aspect of police governance arose because of the lack of precise demarcation of responsibilities for police affairs in the 1964 legislation. They were especially articulated in the clashes between police authorities and chief constables in areas that included Greater Manchester and Merseyside during the 1980s but were also associated with demands that were made by the Greater London Council for the ‘democratisation of policing’ in a City whose arrangements for police governance were not catered for by the 1964 legislation. The attempted resolution of these problems in the wake of the 1981 disorders will be evaluated whereby reforms proposed in the 1981 Scarman Report and 1981 Smith Royal Commission were introduced in the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act. A key intention of this legislation was that of police governance—the desire to reinvigorate consent in disaffected communities as an alternative to enhanced local control over policing being exercised by local people or their political representatives. The chief reforms advanced in the 1984 legislation to secure this objective were safeguards to the use of contentious police powers, the introduction of consultative committees, changes to the operations of the police complaints machinery and the reinvigoration of community policing as the underpinning of a proactive rather than a reactive approach to the policing of local communities.