The Police Complaints Board (PCB) was the British government organisation tasked with overseeing the system for handling complaints made against police forces in England and Wales from 1 June 1977 until it was replaced by the Police Complaints Authority on 29 April 1985.
[1] The new board could scrutinise a report produced by an investigating force and satisfy itself that justice had been done, or instruct the chief constable of the force against whom the complaint had been made to take disciplinary proceedings against the offending police officers.
The PCB did not cover Northern Ireland, which was the responsibility of a separate body, the Police Complaints Board for Northern Ireland also set up under the Police Act 1976.
The 1981 Brixton riots, and the Scarman report on it which investigated, amongst other things, allegations of racism against the police led to pressure to reform the PCB.
A significant change was that the PCA was given extra powers allowing it to supervise police investigations into complaints, which has been taken further in its successor, the Independent Police Complaints Commission which replaced it on 1 April 2004 and which has the ability to carry out its own independent investigations.