The Reform party’s promise to abolish policies on equality and diversity is “ludicrous” and threatens to take policing and society backwards, one of the country’s most senior chief constables has said.

Serena Kennedy retires on Sunday as the chief constable of Merseyside police, after a tumultuous four years in charge.

She led its response to the Southport dance class murders last year, the riots that followed and led the way on giving ethnicity and nationality details of suspects, to counter disinformation.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, Kennedy said the riots in Southport started with “carloads” of people arriving to attack a mosque, and dismissed claims that asylum seekers were to blame for a crime wave.

She also called for a new national scheme to counter violence, and criticised politicians including the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, for making questionable statements at times of heightened tension, such as immediately after last summer’s Southport riot.

Reform UK, which recently won local councils and is predicted to win more in elections next May, is vowing to scrap what it calls DEI initiatives – the term used by Donald Trump supporters – on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Kennedy said: “I have a real nervousness that we are going backwards in relation to diversity and equality.”

She said those groups with less confidence in policing and other public services, such as ethnic minorities and women, needed efforts by key institutions such as the police to win their trust back.

Kennedy said: “Is it acceptable for policing and the public sector to stop worrying about those people where there is a confidence gap and say, well that’s just tough, and we’ll let that confidence gap get even wider? … Absolutely not. That’s why the diversity and equality and inclusion strategies and the focus on it are so important.

“Because the lines that are being trotted out around ‘we should treat everybody equally’ – yeah, we should. Everybody should experience the same quality of service from policing or the public sector, but unfortunately they don’t.

“And to level up that confidence gap, that difference in service, you have to have some dedicated resources to do that, both inside the organisation, focusing internally on your culture, and externally.

“To say that you can … lessen that confidence gap, to say that you can make sure that everybody is experiencing the same quality of service without some dedicated resources to do it is just ludicrous.”

Kennedy’s retirement from policing, leaves her free to voice not just her concerns, but also those of other senior figures concerned by intense attacks on policing by rightwing political figures.

She said political attacks on diversity and inclusion, and groups targeting asylum hotels, were causing problems on the streets and for her workforce, leaving some people frightened: “Seeing the disorder that’s out on the streets, some of the narrative coming out around immigration status, colour of your skin, it must be really frightening out there, in our communities, but also for our own workforce.

“So I do think we’re on a bit of a tipping point at this moment, and I think we need to work really hard not to go backwards.”

The toughest challenge in her four years as chief was the July 2024 murder of three schoolgirls, Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, after a man burst into a Southport dance class and stabbed several children.

The next day a vigil to commemorate those murdered was soon followed in the Merseyside town by riots that spread across the country and were the worst in more than a decade.

Kennedy said there was a far-right and organised element. “The officers on the ground report that there was carfuls of people turning up and being dropped off … There was an element of organisation for that. So those numbers swelled very quickly … Within 25 minutes of the vigil ending, the first missiles were thrown at the mosque.”

Kennedy said claims those taking to the street were typical of white working-class anger were contradicted by the fact that white working-class people turned out in greater numbers to repair the attacked mosque and clear up.

In the aftermath of the murders there was a rapid and deliberate spread of false information, designed to whip up trouble, falsely claiming the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker. Kennedy and her force took the unusual step on the evening of the atrocity of releasing the information that the suspect was British-born.

The chief constable said she doubted that a quicker release of information would have defused tensions that led to the riots.

She pointed to this May’s incident where a car went into crowds celebrating Liverpool FC’s Premier League title victory. The incident in Liverpool city centre led to fears of a terrorist attack, which it was not, but also a rapid and determined spread of lies online.

Kennedy recalled how her force released ethnicity details of a man it had arrested, but, she said: “Even when we put out that this was a white, British-born local person … because what we’d put out didn’t suit the narrative that they wanted to swell in terms of that negativity, people carried on with that misinformation.”

She said she was annoyed by politicians such as Farage, who in the aftermath of the Southport riot said the authorities might be wrongly hiding key details from the public. She said: “I was really frustrated that national politicians were making some of the statements that they were making … because of the impact that it was having in terms of trust and confidence in policing. And it wasn’t in my view based on fact, it was based on what was being said on social media.”

Kennedy said claims of two-tier policing were “a ludicrous statement”, and added: “Some of the statements being said by national politicians are having an impact on what is playing out on our streets and what policing, communities and partners are being left to deal with.”

She dismissed claims of asylum seekers being more likely to commit crime and said: “I’m not seeing anything out of kilter … It’s just, it’s more newsworthy.”