Alison Natalie Kay LoweOBE is a British Labour politician and deputy mayor of West Yorkshire for Policing and Crime. She was the first black woman Leeds city councillor, serving from 1990 to 2019, and has served as the chief executive of Touchstone, a mental health charity based in Leeds, from 2004 to 2021.
Lowe won the 2014 Forward Business Woman of the Year award and Stonewall Senior Champion of the Year in 2015.[1]
Personal life
Lowe was born in 1964. Her father had emigrated to Leeds from St Kitts in 1956 and her Leeds-born mother, Kay, was of Irish descent.[2][3] Her mother became pregnant with Lowe's older brother at 20 years old and was subsequently evicted from her family home.[4] Her parents were married in 1961.[5]
Lowe was raised with her three siblings (an older brother and sister, and a younger sister)[6] in Seacroft and attended Parklands Girls High School. She has described her family as like the "Heinz 57 Varieties" due to its diversity.[7]
After marrying at 20 years old, she had two children at 21 and 23, while living in Chapeltown.[7] Her eldest child is poet and writer Adam Lowe. Lowe and her family participated in the ITVfly-on-the-wall documentary, Family Life, in 1999.[1][8]
Lowe is a distant relative of Annie Elizabeth Kaye, an Irish immigrant to South Yorkshire, who was the first woman councillor of her district in Conisborough, as well as the district's first Council Chairwoman, the first woman Magistrate to be appointed to serve on the Doncaster Bench, and the second woman ever appointed magistrate in Yorkshire.[9] She has distant Nigerian heritage on her father's side.[7]
Alongside her commitments as a Leeds city councillor, Lowe worked for numerous homelessness charities before, in 2004, she became CEO of Touchstone, a Leeds-based mental health charity.[1] In May 2021, Lowe handed in her three-months notice after being CEO of Touchstone for over 17 years and announced she would step down as to become the deputy mayor Policing and Crime of West Yorkshire.[10][11][12][13][14]
After 29 years' continuous service as a councillor, she retired from the council at the 2019 election and, in 2020, was made an honorary alderwoman of Leeds.[15][16] One of her first roles in this capacity was to chair a review of statues in the city in response to criticisms of the city's statuary in connection with the Black Lives Matter movement.[17][18]
On 12 May 2021, Lowe was appointed as the inaugural deputy mayor of West Yorkshire for Policing and Crime by the first West Yorkshire MayorTracy Brabin.[22] The role was officially confirmed on 18 June 2021.[23][24][25]
In July 2022, Lowe was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Leeds, on the basis of "Alison’s personal commitment to speaking up for the marginalised and to promoting the importance of frank and open discussion about mental health extends into her professional commitments."[27]
