Performance Tracker 2025: Police

The recruitment of 20,000 additional officers under recent Conservative governments sharply increased the size of the workforce and so improved police capacity. But many officers are inexperienced, including some of those supervising the newest recruits. There are also key skills shortages in investigation and digital forensics. These problems mean it will be difficult to increase the number of offences that lead to a charge or other positive outcome, or to reduce delays. Labour’s manifesto commitments on violence against women and girls, knife crime and neighbourhood policing are ambitious and, while they provide a clear focus, they cover a huge swathe of crime and policing activity. Forces may struggle to prioritise all these areas at once.

Rebuilding public trust and confidence in the police also poses a major challenge for forces and the government, following substantial declines since the 2010s. Public trust is fundamental to effective policing and improving confidence is a key plank within Labour’s safer streets mission. Protests and intermittent disorder over recent summers and accusations of ‘two-tier policing’ are only likely to make this more difficult.

Recent increases in police spending still leave it slightly below 2009/10 levels

Spending on police in England and Wales has slowly crept up in recent years, but in 2023/24, just before Labour came into government, it remained 5% below 2009/10 levels in real terms. ¹ Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, ‘Local authority revenue expenditure and financing England’, 2009/10–2023/24 and StatsWales, 'Revenue outturn expenditure summary, by service', 2009/10–2023/24.  The core police grant still makes up the majority of police funding, but since 2019/20 a small but growing proportion of central government funding has been provided via separate ring-fenced funding streams for specific purposes. The most significant of these is the police uplift programme, ² Home Office, ‘Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2026’, 2025.  announced by Boris Johnson’s government in 2019 to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers by March 2023. ³ Comptroller and Auditor General, The Police Uplift Programme, Session 2021–22, HC 1147, https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Police-uplift-programme.pdf  This ring-fenced funding was increased in 2024/25 to encourage forces to maintain or slightly increase officer numbers. However, it remains a small proportion of total funding – 4% of the total central government grant in 2024/25. ⁴ Home Office, ‘Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2026’, 2025.

Police funding is increasingly reliant on the police precept, a ring-fenced part of council tax set by the local police and crime commissioner each year. The precept now accounts for over a third of police funding (34%), up from a quarter in 2009/10 (25%). While the central government grant to police forces has gone up 8% in real terms between 2015/16 and 2024/25, precept funding has grown by 36%. ⁵ Home Office, ‘Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2026’, 2025.

Changes to the central government core grant for each force since 2009/10 have not taken into account the share of funding that each force received from the precept, meaning cuts have fallen very unevenly across forces. ⁶ Hales G, ‘Cutting the police funding cake(s): now is the best opportunity to reform the funding formula but wider concerns about fairness and service delivery won’t go away’, The Police Foundation, 18 July 2024, accessed 1 September 2025, www.police-foundation.org.uk/2024/07/now-is-the-best-opportunity-to-reform-the-police-funding-formula  Unfortunately, we only have force-level data from 2015/16,^* which is after the biggest cuts to funding had already occurred. But since then, the increase in total funding has ranged from 24% for Dyfed–Powys to 7% for the Metropolitan Police (the only force to miss its recruitment target under the police uplift programme, and so to miss out on the bonus funding attached to it). ⁷ Home Office, ‘Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2026’, 2025.

_{*    Changes to the structure of police funding in 2015/16 mean that figures for previous years are not comparable.}

More deprived areas have been the losers from this shift. Less deprived local authorities have a more affluent tax base and raise more of their funding for police services through tax. ¹²¹ Atkins G and Hoddinott S, Neighbourhood services under strain: How a decade of cuts and rising demand for social care affected local services, Institute for Government, 2022, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/neighbourhood-services-under-strain  They have found it easier to increase revenues from the precept, ⁹ Hales G, ‘Cutting the police funding cake(s): now is the best opportunity to reform the funding formula but wider concerns about fairness and service delivery won’t go away’, The Police Foundation, 18 July 2024, accessed 1 September 2025, www.police-foundation.org.uk/2024/07/now-is-the-best-opportunity-to-reform-the-police-funding-formula  and so saw smaller reductions in their police spending power over the 2010s. ¹⁰ Hoddinott S, ‘The government is directing more investment to the most deprived councils’, blog, Institute for Government, 23 December 2024, retrieved 8 October 2025, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/government-investment-deprived-councils  In England, there is a very strong relationship (r2 = 0.83) between the level of deprivation in a police force area and the proportion of funding they received from the police precept in 2025/26,^* and a strong relationship between deprivation and the change in police funding between 2015/16 and 2025/26 (r2 = 0.36).^**

_{*    Excludes the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police. The Metropolitan Police received a much smaller increase in funding due to missing its recruitment target. City of London Police does not receive a police precept but receives other funding in lieu. Deprivation is measured differently in Wales, so Welsh forces have been excluded.}

_{** Excludes the Metropolitan Police, as it received a much smaller increase in funding due to missing its recruitment target.}

The police funding formula, which determines how core funding is distributed across forces, is also widely considered to be outdated and no longer fit for purpose. ¹¹ Hales G, ‘Cutting the police funding cake(s): now is the best opportunity to reform the funding formula but wider concerns about fairness and service delivery won’t go away’, The Police Foundation, 18 July 2024, accessed 1 September 2025, www.police-foundation.org.uk/2024/07/now-is-the-best-opportunity-to-reform-the-police-funding-formula  Back in 2018, the National Audit Office concluded that the Home Office “cannot be sure overall funding is being directed to the right places”. ¹² Comptroller and Auditor General, Financial sustainability of police forces in England and Wales 2018, Session 2017–19, HC 1501, National Audit Office, 2018, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Financial-sustainability-of-police-forces-in-England-and-Wales-2018.pdf

The 2025 spending review stated that police spending power would increase by 1.7% a year on average between 2025/26 and 2028/29. But as the overall Home Office budget for day-to-day spending is due to fall by 1.7% a year over this period, this is likely to be highly reliant on further council tax rises from police and crime commissioners. ¹³ HM Treasury, Spending Review 2025, Cp 1336, The Stationery Office, 2025.  Additionally, the impact of pay rises and higher National Insurance contributions is likely to swallow up a large proportion of this increase, given that a high proportion of police spending is on staff.

Following several years of steady decline, police capital funding almost tripled in 2022/23 (up 189% on the previous year), and while it has dropped since then, it remains 62% above 2019/20 in 2025/26. The bulk of this has gone on technology programmes, which have accounted for around 80% of total capital funding since 2022/23, compared with around a quarter (23%) in 2020/21 and 2021/22. ¹⁴ Home Office, ‘Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2026’, 2025.

Recent growth in police officer numbers has increased capacity but limited flexibility for chief constables

The total number of police officers grew substantially in the early 2020s following the Johnson government’s pledge to recruit 20,000 additional officers. This target was met in March 2023 and officer numbers have remained at this higher level since then. However, due to substantial cuts to officer numbers between 2009/10 and 2015/16 total numbers were only 3% higher in March 2024, just before Labour returned to office, than in March 2010, and 7% lower on a per capita basis. ¹⁵ Home Office, ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025’, 2025.

Forces were each set specific recruitment targets and incentivised to meet these through a dedicated funding pot. ¹⁶ Comptroller and Auditor General, Financial sustainability of police forces in England and Wales 2018, Session 2017–19, HC 1501, National Audit Office, 2018, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Financial-sustainability-of-police-forces-in-England-and-Wales-2018.pdf  This was extremely effective in increasing officer numbers and ultimately the recruitment target was exceeded nationally and every force bar the Met hit its target. ¹⁷ Home Office, ‘Police officer uplift, England and Wales, quarterly update to 31 March 2023’, 2023.  But ring-fencing the funding in this way and focusing only on additional numbers of warranted officers – rather than community support officers (PCSOs) or police staff – has meant that chief constables have less flexibility in designing their workforce to meet local needs.

Labour made a manifesto commitment to increase the number of officers, PCSOs and special constables in neighbourhood roles by 13,000 within five years. ¹⁸ The Labour Party, Change, 2024, retrieved 8 October 2025, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Labour-Party-manifesto-2024.pdf  This programme has already started, and we heard from interviewees that the government is taking a flexible approach to the staff mix in each force, so that chief officers can decide what will work best in their force. To date, there has been mixed progress. Between March 2024 and March 2025, the number of officers in neighbourhood roles increased by 400 to around 11,100 (full-time equivalent, FTE), 8% of all officers, but the number of PCSOs fell by 300 to 6,100. ¹⁹ Home Office, ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025’, 2025.

The emphasis on neighbourhood policing has been broadly well received, but some interviewees expressed anxiety about whether the funding will be adequate, as it will depend on how many of these officers and PCSOs will be new recruits versus those redeployed from other roles, which would have potential impacts on other areas of police work. ²⁰ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  If the mandatory assignment of officers to neighbourhood policing leaves other areas such as response policing short-staffed, neighbourhood officers are likely to be used to cover the gap, either by short-term redeployment to other areas or redefining what counts as ‘neighbourhood’ policing. ²¹ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  This risks diluting traditional neighbourhood policing. But if this kind of redeployment does not occur, and response or investigative policing suffers as a result, this could cause public confidence to decline further. Balancing these risks will be a key challenge for chief officers over the next few years.

Officers are less experienced and some forces continue to face key skills gaps and shortages of experienced officers to train new joiners

The average experience level of officers has fallen significantly. This is in large part because of the surge in recruitment under the police uplift programme. Total headcount increased by 16% in the five years to March 2024, but the proportion of current officers who joined over that period was 35%. More than half of officers now have less than 10 years’ experience; up from a third in 2015/16. However, the number of officers with less than a year of experience has fallen as recruitment has slowed, and the leaving rate for officers who joined under the uplift programme has also fallen. ²² Home Office, ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025’, 2025.

The relative lack of experienced officers has caused challenges to training and mentorship for new officers, with some joiners being mentored by officers only just out of their own two-year probationary period. ²³ HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation, Efficiency spotlight report: The impact of recruitment and retention on the criminal justice system, 2024, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/43/2024/11/2024-02-09-Joint-Efficiency-Spotlight-Report.pdf

The police inspectorate has repeatedly highlighted that there are not enough detectives, and in particular experienced detectives, and so there is a lack of key investigative skills. This leaves junior officers holding complex cases with inadequate supervision. ²⁴ HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation, Efficiency spotlight report: The impact of recruitment and retention on the criminal justice system, 2024, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/43/2024/11/2024-02-09-Joint-Efficiency-Spotlight-Report.pdf ^{, 25} His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services and His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, Joint case building by the police and Crown Prosecution Service, 2025, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/24/2025/07/HMCPSI-HMICFRS-Joint-Case-Building-Inspection-Repor…  In almost every force, half of the rape and serious sexual offences roles were filled by trainees. ²⁶ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, Progress to introduce a national operating model for rape and other serious sexual offences investigations, 2024, https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/progress-to-introduce-a-national-operating-model-for-rape-and-other-serious-sexual-offen…

Cases are often given to newly trained officers who have no experience with investigating offences or building strong cases… Poor supervision also adds to weaker investigations. – Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, The impact of recruitment and retention on the criminal justice system ²⁷ HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, HM Inspectorate of Prisons and HM Inspectorate of Probation, Efficiency spotlight report: The impact of recruitment and retention on the criminal justice system, 2024, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/43/2024/11/2024-02-09-Joint-Efficiency-Spotlight-Report.pdf

As experienced detectives have left or moved into other roles, they have often not been replaced. Forces are struggling to recruit detectives and the detective route is now seen as a less desirable career path for new officers. ²⁸ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  It involves long hours and a high workload, with a lower shift allowance than for those working in a response team, and than used to be available for detectives. ¹²⁴ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  Benefits like the plain clothes allowance have also been removed. ¹²⁵ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  The shift in focus of detective work to more domestic abuse and sexual offences is also emotionally difficult and less appealing to some officers. ³¹ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.

There are also key skills gaps in digital forensics, with the police inspectorate finding in 2022 that few forces had the right staff and resources to meet demand. ³² His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, Digital forensics: An inspection into how well the police and other agencies use digital forensics in their investigations, 2022, https://assets-hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/uploads/inspection-police-other-agencies-digital-forensics-investigations.pdf  Work is ongoing to improve this, including through a joint digital forensics programme launched in 2023 and run by the Police Digital Service and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), ³³ Forensic Capability Network, ‘Forensics to receive £25.6m national funding in 2022/23 following strategic review’, Forensic Capability Network, 14 February 2022, retrieved 8 October 2025, www.fcn.police.uk/news/2022-02/forensics-receive-ps256m-national-funding-202223-following-strategic-review  but interviewees felt it was too soon to say what impact this was having. Fraud investigation is a particular gap, ³⁴ Institute for Government interviews, 2025.  with the inspectorate finding in 2023 that most front-line officers have no specific fraud training and “dedicated analytical work to support fraud investigations… [is] the exception rather than the rule”. ³⁵ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, Fraud: Time to Choose – An inspection of the police response to fraud, 2023, https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/an-inspection-of-the-police-response-to-fraud/#

After the first year of service, policing has a relatively high retention rate. In 2023/24, 16% of new officers left within their first year, but the leaving rate dropped to 8% for those who had served 1–2 years and to 3–4% for those who had served 4–25 years. Of those who had been in the force for between five and 25 years in 2018/19, 85% were still police officers in 2023/24. ³⁶ Home Office, ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025’, 2025

While overall crime levels have declined dramatically, some offence types buck the trend – including shoplifting, knife crime and sexual assault

Accurately measuring crime rates and trends is extremely challenging for several reasons:

• a large proportion of crime is not reported to the police
• governments regularly create new offences
• a large proportion of crime has no immediately identifiable victim who might report it (such as drug possession)
• and there is dramatic variation in how things may be recorded as crimes by the police – for example, if multiple historic offences are disclosed while a recent crime is being reported, or in response to changes in crime recording rules over time.

The best means of estimating crime levels is via household surveys, such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which ask people about experiences of crime, typically within the last year. However, these still have significant gaps, especially around offences that do not target individuals or households, such as shoplifting or possession of weapons offences. Also, the main part of the crime survey does not include offences against children under 16 – when at least 290,000 children aged 10–15 were estimated to have been victims of crime in 2024/25. ³⁷ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.

Overall crime levels against individuals and households have been falling dramatically and fairly consistently since the mid-1990s, across a range of different crime types. When Labour left office in 2009/10, estimated ‘headline crime’ was down almost half (44%) since 1997.^* By the time Labour came back into government in 2024, it had halved again, with around 4.8 million incidents compared with 9.5 million in 2009/10. The fall has been particularly marked for criminal damage, down 75% since 2009/10, and robbery, down 66%, while violence has fallen less than average, declining 42%. ³⁸ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

_{*    Headline crime includes most crime types that affect individuals or households who are resident in England and Wales, such as violence, theft, criminal damage and so on. It excludes sexual offences, stalking, and some domestic abuse offences such as coercive control; it also excludes crimes against businesses or which have no specific victim, such as drug possession. A separate series including fraud and computer misuse was introduced in 2016/17, but these have been excluded here to allow for comparison to pre-2016/17 figures.}

However, some serious offences have been increasing since around 2014 and, in the last two years, there seems to have been a broader rise in crime. Estimated headline crime, excluding fraud and computer misuse, rose 5% from 2022/23 to 2024/25, though this was not statistically significant. Some crime types not captured in this measure (like shoplifting) have also been rising sharply. Similarly, fraud has shot up in the last year (up 31% from 2023/24 to 2024/25), to the highest level since at least 2016/17, when records began. These increases suggest overall crime has ticked up slightly in the last two years, but remains below pre-pandemic levels and well below earlier years. Many of the growing crime types are specifically being targeted by the government as part of their safer streets mission. ³⁹ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

Neighbourhood crime

Labour has emphasised tackling neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour in its ‘Plan for Change’, including shop theft, street theft and assaults on retail workers. ⁴⁰ Prime Minister’s Office 10 Downing Street, ‘Safer Streets’, Plan for Change, (no date) retrieved 8 October 2025, www.gov.uk/missions/safer-streets  Neighbourhood crime was also a focus of the Johnson government’s 2021 ‘Beating Crime Plan’. ⁴¹ Home Office, Beating crime plan, 2021, www.gov.uk/government/publications/beating-crime-plan  While many of these types of offences are less common than when Labour were last in government, there have been some large and rapid increases in recent years, particularly in shoplifting and theft from the person – which includes pickpocketing and snatch thefts, like your phone being stolen out of your hand. ⁴² Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

There has been a major rise in police recorded shoplifting offences in the last few years, following a big dip in 2020/21 due to the pandemic. There were more than half a million shoplifting offences in 2024/25, the highest on record; up 20% in just a year and up 50% on 2019/20.^{*, 43} Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.  Changes in reporting and police recording mean this may not accurately capture the underlying trends in the level of shoplifting, but it strongly suggests a real and substantial increase.

Snatch theft has also risen extremely sharply and suddenly, with estimated levels tripling from 2019/20 to 2024/25 (up 179%). It is now at its highest level since 2008/09. Theft from the person overall has also risen dramatically, though from a historic low; most of this increase has been in theft attempts. Police recorded theft from the person shows a similar trend; up 15% on the previous year in 2024/25 and a third (34%) on 2019/20. It is striking, however, that not all types of theft have been increasing. More serious forms of theft, such as burglary, continue to decline. As a result, total theft has only increased slightly since 2022/23 and remains below 2019/20 levels. Estimated theft incidents against individuals and households fell 15% from 2019/20 to 2024/25,^** while police recorded theft (including shoplifting) fell 8%. ⁴⁴ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

_{*    As shoplifting targets businesses rather than individuals or households, there is no reliable survey data on trends.}

_{**    There was an estimated 6% increase in theft offences against individuals and households from 2022/23 to 2024/25, but this was not statistically significant.}

The government has not set itself specific targets on reducing neighbourhood crime, unlike on knife crime and violence against women and girls. But these common theft offences are likely to be a large part of what it is judged against.

Violence against women and girls

Labour’s 2024 manifesto included an ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. ⁴⁵ The Labour Party, Change, 2024, retrieved 8 October 2025, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Labour-Party-manifesto-2024.pdf  The government has not yet specified the metrics it will use to track this, but the central measure will be the proportion of adults who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault and/or stalking in the last year. This aligns with the definition used by previous governments: all violence or abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls, ⁴⁶ Home Office, Tackling violence against women and girls strategy, 2021, www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-violence-against-women-and-girls-strategy/tackling-violence-against-women-and-girls-strategy  including male victims of these types of offences as well as women and girls.^* The Office for National Statistics has developed a new combined measure for these offences, which estimates that in 2024/25, 10.6% of people over 16 were victims of at least one of these offence types in the last year: 12.8% of women and 8.4% of men. ⁴⁷ Office for National Statistics, ‘Developing a combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking, England and Wales: July 2025’, 24 July 2025, retrieved 8 October 2025, www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/developingacombinedmeasureofdomesticabusesexualassaultandstalkingenglandandwales…  Of these, domestic abuse is by far the most common.

The number of people who are victims of domestic abuse each year appears to be falling. In 2024/25, 9% of women and 6.5% of men were estimated to have experienced domestic abuse in the last year.^** Figures from before 2023/24 are not directly comparable, as recent years’ figures are based on an expanded definition of domestic abuse that includes more offences, such as coercive control. But the trend up to 2023/24 shows a slow decline in domestic abuse prevalence for both men and women: down 20% for women since 2009/10 and 19% for men. ⁴⁸ Office for National Statistics, ‘Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics’, March 2024.  This is, however, a much smaller decline than the decline in the victimisation rate for all crime (down 53%) or for violence overall (down 39%). ⁴⁹ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.  This suggests domestic abuse now makes up a larger proportion of all crimes. It is hard to estimate how much, but a reasonable estimate is that domestic abuse victims make up about 40% of adults who were victims of crime (other than fraud or computer misuse).^{***, 50} Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.

_{*    The most reliable estimates for these crime types come from standalone self-completed questionnaires as part of the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Self-completed sections produce more reliable results for these types of offences than questions asked by an interviewer, which is the approach used for the rest of the crime survey, but they still may be influenced by changes in how people understand and define consent and assault over time. See Office for National Statistics, ‘Evaluating a new measure of domestic abuse’, 16 May 2025.} 

_{**    This measure only captures the number of people who have been victims in the last year, not how many times they have been a victim or the number of crime incidents.}

_{***    Based on prevalence estimates for domestic abuse from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. If all violence reported in the main survey and all sexual assaults are not domestic abuse-related (which is highly unlikely), and no domestic abuse victims experienced any other types of crime, domestic abuse victims would account for 38% of all victims. If a third of violence reported in the main survey and half of sexual assaults are domestic abuse-related (roughly the proportions from police-recorded crime), domestic abuse victims would be at least 42% of all victims.}

There is more variation in the number of victims of sexual assault, likely because numbers are lower than for domestic abuse, but the broad trend shows an increase over the last 10 years or so since 2013/14, following a decline from 2005/06. Among 16–59-year-olds, 3.8% of women and 0.9% of men had experienced sexual assault within the last year in 2024/25, very similar to when Labour were last in office in 2009/10 (3.4% and 0.8%, respectively).^* In 2024/25, 1.9% of all adults over 16 had experienced sexual assault in the last year. There appears to have been a sharp drop in the number of victims of rape and assault by penetration, the most serious forms of sexual assault, in the last two years, but small sample sizes mean this must be interpreted with caution. ⁵¹ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.

_{*    Data before 2021/22 is only available for 16–59-year-olds, rather than all people over 16.}

As with domestic abuse, sexual assault now makes up a large and growing proportion of crimes. It is not possible to estimate how many incidents of sexual assault there are because data is not collected on the number of times a person has been victimised, but there were around 900,000 victims of sexual assault in 2024/25. ⁵² Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.  If they all experienced a single assault – likely to be a significant underestimate – that would be 16% of all estimated non-fraud crime against adults in that year.^* This is up from around 7% in 2009/10. ⁵³ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.  Given the much greater complexity of investigating and responding to most sexual assault cases compared with other crime types, this means a significant rise in the average complexity of crimes.

_{*    This is calculated by dividing the number of sexual assault victims by the sum of estimated headline (non- sexual assault) crime incidents and sexual assault victims. The estimated total does not include crime affecting businesses or non-victim-based crimes such as drug possession. It also excludes stalking and certain domestic abuse offences such as coercive control, because these are also calculated as victimisation or prevalence rates, rather than a number of incidents.} 

Knife crime and serious violence

The Labour manifesto also pledged to halve knife crime within 10 years. ⁵⁴ The Labour Party, Change, 2024, retrieved 8 October 2025, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Labour-Party-manifesto-2024.pdf  Indicators of knife crime and serious violence give a mixed picture of trends in these offences. Police recorded crime is generally considered more reliable than survey data for low-volume, high-harm offences such as robbery and serious violence, including murder and attempted murder. After several years of decline, these have all increased substantially since low points in around 2012/13, with attempted murder and assault with intent to cause serious harm both up more than half from 2009/10 to 2024/25 (56% and 59%, respectively). ⁵⁵ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.  But since 2018/19, there have been moderate declines in homicide incidents and attempted murder, with homicide incidents down 13% to 2023/24 ⁵⁶ Office for National Statistics, ‘Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2024’, 2025.  and attempted murder down 11% to 2024/25.^{*, 57} Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

_{*    Homicide includes murder, manslaughter and causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult; a death can be recorded as a homicide even if no one has been convicted of one of these offences. A homicide incident is an event where at least one person has died as a result of one of these offences; it counts as a single incident regardless of the number of people killed or when they died.}

Police recorded violent and sexual offences with a sharp object have also increased dramatically over a similar period. Certain serious offences involving a knife or sharp object rose 46% from 2010/11 to 2024/25, though they are now slightly lower (4%) than pre-pandemic.^* Knife crime causing injury, including murder, attempted murder and manslaughter, has also risen dramatically since 2010/11 (45%), though it has fallen 8% from its peak in 2019/20. ⁵⁸ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

_{*    This category includes homicide, attempted murder, threats to kill, assault with injury, assault with intent to cause serious harm, robbery, rape and sexual assault.}

However, hospital admissions for assault with a sharp object show a slightly different picture. While they did increase more than 40% from 2014/15 to 2018/19, they have been steadily falling since 2018/19, and are now the lowest on record. This may partly be driven by a greater proportion of care being delivered in outpatient settings. But it also suggests that while knives are increasingly being used to commit robbery and sexual assaults, as well as in issuing threats, the use of knives to cause physical injury is falling, at least when it comes to serious injury. ⁵⁹ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

Neighbourhood crime, violence against women and girls, and knife crime are all important issues and make sense as priority areas for the government, given current crime trends. But between them they cover a huge range of policing activity and roughly half of all police recorded crime.^* All these areas have been named priorities for governments in recent years, from the 2018 Serious Violence Strategy ⁶⁰ Home Office, Serious Violence Strategy, 2018, www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-violence-strategy  to the 2021 Rape Review ⁶¹ Ministry of Justice, End-to-end rape review report on findings and actions, 2021, www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-rape-review-report-on-findings-and-actions  and the 2023 Retail Crime Action Plan. ⁶² Home Office, ‘Action plan to tackle shoplifting launched’, 23 October 2023, www.gov.uk/government/news/action-plan-to-tackle-shoplifting-launched  Achieving meaningful change may require a narrower area of focus for police forces. Moreover, many of these issues require a cross-government response to tackle them effectively. The College of Policing recently highlighted the importance of partnership working for problem- solving in policing, including clarifying different roles and responsibilities with partners across and outside of government. ⁶³ College of Policing, ‘Partnerships’, College of Policing, 4 September 2023, retrieved 8 October 2025, www.college.police.uk/guidance/effective-implementation-problem-oriented-policing/partnerships

_{*    Collectively, domestic abuse flagged offences, sexual offences, theft offences except ‘other theft’, and selected offences involving a knife make up around 45% of all recorded crime excluding fraud and computer misuse. Certain criminal damage, public order and drug offences are also likely to be included within neighbourhood crime.} 

Demand on the police is not just about crime rates

Crucially, crime levels do not necessarily correlate closely with demand on the police. A large portion of police time is spent on things other than reactive crime response, including neighbourhood patrols, policing public events such as protests and parades, responding to mental health crises, and public protection work such as missing persons investigations or participating in multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) in connection with serious offenders. What is more, crimes create demand on the police when they are reported, which may be years or even decades after they occurred. And figures on numbers of crimes alone do not capture the differing degree of complexity of different types of crimes.

While the volume of crime occurring (as measured by household surveys, described above) has fallen, police recorded crime has risen substantially – up 24% on 2009/10 and 49% in the last 10 years (2014/15 to 2024/25).^* The bulk of the increase has been in victim-based crime, but the estimated proportion of victim-based crimes that get reported to the police has not changed significantly, and remains below half. ⁶⁴ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.

_{*    Excluding fraud and computer misuse, which are reported and recorded differently to other offences.}

Instead, the increase in the number of crimes that the police record has been driven by a pronounced emphasis on improving police recording of crime, combined with changes to police recording practices, which have particularly affected the recording of historic offences, less serious violence and public order offences, and crimes like stalking and harassment. ⁶⁵ Office for National Statistics, ‘Exploring diverging trends between the Crime Survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime’, 24 July 2024, retrieved 9 October 2025, www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/methodologies/exploringdivergingtrendsbetweenthecrimesurveyforenglandandwalesandpolicerec… ^{, 66} Hales G, ‘Crime is up – blame the police?’, The Police Foundation, 14 March 2018, retrieved 9 October 2025, www.police-foundation.org.uk/2018/03/crime-blame-police-crime-survey-england-wales-tells-us-police-crime-recording-practices-exposes-limitations  These changes began around 2014, when the police inspectorate estimated that only around 80% of all crimes reported to the police were being recorded (excluding fraud, which is reported and recorded separately). ⁶⁷ Office for Statistics Regulation, ‘The quality of police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales’, published 16 May 2024, updated 3 March 2025, retrieved 9 October 2025, https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov. uk/publication/the-quality-of-police-recorded-crime-statistics-for-england-and-wales/pages/3  Further changes have been implemented since then, and the proportion of reported crimes that are recorded has since risen to 92%. In 2023, some of these changes to crime recording practices were unwound, which may have contributed to the small decreases in police recorded crime since then.^{*, 68} His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, How effectively do the police record crime? PEEL spotlight report, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, 2025, https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets-hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/uploads/how-effectively-do-police-record-crime-peel-spotlight-report.pdf

Many of the crimes that would previously have been unrecorded lead to no further action; for example, because they refer to a historic offence revealed by a victim when reporting a later crime. Nevertheless, recording both the offence and the outcome accurately poses its own demands on police time. The number of offences and possible outcomes has also increased over time, which makes accurate recording still more complex. ⁶⁹ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, How effectively do the police record crime? PEEL spotlight report, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, 2025, https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets-hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/uploads/how-effectively-do-police-record-crime-peel-spotlight-report.pdf

_{*    In 2017, a change was introduced such that ‘conduct crimes’, which include stalking, harassment and coercive control, had to be recorded alongside at least one other type of offence. This meant that the incident could effectively be recorded as two crimes, e.g. malicious communication and harassment. The requirement was dropped in 2023, which led to a significant fall in malicious communication offences and other similar offences.}

Domestic abuse and sexual offences make up a growing proportion of police workload, increasing complexity and overall demand

As discussed above, domestic abuse and sexual assault now make up a larger and growing proportion of crime. At the same time, the police are under growing pressure to take these offences seriously and respond sensitively and appropriately to victims. ⁷⁰ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, Police response to violence against women and girls: Final inspection report, 2021, https://assets-hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/uploads/police-response-to-violence-against-women-and-girls-final-inspection-report.pdf  Domestic abuse and sexual violence are complex and time-consuming to respond to. They may require detailed vulnerability and safeguarding assessments, and engagement with other agencies such as children’s services, housing and the third sector. There is broad consensus that this is increasing the complexity of crime-related demand on the police. ⁷¹ Institute for Government interviews, 2025  And as with other crime types, these offences increasingly involve often lengthy digital analysis and investigation. ⁷² Institute for Government stakeholder engagement, 2025.

In 2023/24, 16% of police recorded crimes were identified as domestic abuse- related, up from 11% in 2015/16, though methodology changes and improvements in identifying and recording offences as domestic abuse-related mean these figures are not entirely comparable. ⁷³ Office for National Statistics, ‘Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics’, March 2024.  But even so, this still demonstrates increased demand on the police, both in assessing and recording that information accurately, and responding appropriately.

Sexual offences also make up an increasing proportion of police recorded crime, up from 1.2% in 2009/10 to 3.1% on the eve of the pandemic, and 3.9% in 2024/25. Within this category, rape offences have risen even more sharply, going from 0.4% of all crimes in 2009/10 to 1.3% in 2024/25. ⁷⁴ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025’, 2025.  Again, this is likely to have been influenced by changes in reporting and recording, including the reporting of historic sexual offences in the wake of widespread coverage of accusations against Jimmy Savile and other high-profile figures. ⁷⁵ Office for National Statistics, ‘Sexual offences prevalence and trends, England and Wales: year ending March 2022’, 2023, www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesprevalenceandtrendsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2022#sexual-offe…

There has also been strong public and political pressure on the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to improve rates of prosecution for rape. In 2019, the Theresa May government launched the End-to-End Rape Review to understand the sharp fall in rape investigations and prosecutions since 2016/17, and how to reverse it. ⁷⁶ Ministry of Justice, End-to-end rape review report on findings and actions, 2021, www.gov.uk/government/publications/end-to-end-rape-review-report-on-findings-and-actions  Operation Soteria, a joint police and CPS effort to improve the response to rape and serious sexual offences, began in 2021 and was rolled out across England and Wales in 2023. ⁷⁷ King A, Munro VE and Andrade LY, Operation Soteria: Improving CPS responses to rape complaints and complainants: Final findings from independent academic research, 2023, https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/183258/7/Operataion%20Soteria_Full%20Report%202024.pdf  These efforts appear to be bearing fruit in at least some forces, improving investigations into rape and serious sexual offences as well as the police response to victims. ⁷⁸ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, Progress to introduce a national operating model for rape and other serious sexual offences investigations, 2024, https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/progress-to-introduce-a-national-operating-model-for-rape-and-other-serious-sexual-offen…  These are positive steps, but do create additional demand on forces, in the context of quite limited investigative resources.

Technology and process changes mean responding to crime is becoming more, rather than less, time-intensive for policing

The nature of demand on policing has changed in other ways. Interviewees repeatedly emphasised the increased administrative burden on police officers in preparing case files before a charging decision can be made. This seems to be principally due to increasing volumes of evidence such as video footage and the forensic examination of phones and other devices, which means that even straightforward cases now take a lot of administrative time. Much of this work can most efficiently be carried out by police staff, rather than warranted officers. But the recent focus on driving up officer numbers – and the funding linked to recruitment targets for forces – has led to officers performing civilian (staff) roles. ⁷⁹ The Policing Productivity Review, Policing Productivity Review, Home Office, 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-productivity-review/policing-productivity-review-accessible

Chief constables highlighted a number of continued capability gaps for which the use of additional officers may not be the most productive approach. Indeed, these could often more cheaply and effectively be filled by staff… as well as the right technological investments. – The Policing Productivity Review ⁸⁰ The Policing Productivity Review, Policing Productivity Review, Home Office, 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-productivity-review/policing-productivity-review-accessible

The police also now have much more extensive work to do preparing case files, and at an earlier stage in investigations. Changes to guidelines on disclosure were introduced in late 2020, in response to changes in data protection requirements and to strong criticism from the police and CPS inspectorates around the disclosure of unused evidence and material. ⁸¹ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services and His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, Joint case building by the police and Crown Prosecution Service, 2025, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/24/2025/07/HMCPSI-  Much more unused material (such as crime reports) now needs to be disclosed and submitted to the CPS before a charging decision is even made, and case files should be ‘trial ready’ when they are shared with the CPS. This requires redacting sensitive information from large volumes of evidence, even though many of these cases never result in a charge and so the information is never shared beyond the CPS.

These changes have substantially increased police workload, and the bulk of this falls on investigators. The Policing Productivity Review in 2024 estimated that investigators spend 770,000 hours a year redacting unused material ⁸² The Policing Productivity Review, Policing Productivity Review, Home Office, 2023, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-productivity-review/policing-productivity-review-accessible  and a joint report from the police and CPS inspectorates argued that redaction at the pre-charge stage “has a serious impact on [police] resourcing and productivity”. ⁸³ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services and His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, Joint case building by the police and Crown Prosecution Service, 2025, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/24/2025/07/HMCPSI-HMICFRS-Joint-Case-Building-Inspection-Repor…  The impact of these changes is drastically amplified by the growing volume of digital evidence, because there is more information and evidence that has to be followed up on, and more that needs redacting before a charge, or even whether prosecution is in the public interest, will be considered

“There is no such thing as a simple case file any more.” – Interviewee

Some forces are using digital tools to automate redaction and the Police Digital Service is supporting this work to try to ensure all forces have access to these kinds of tools. These offer the potential for substantial efficiency savings, with Bedfordshire Police reducing the time needed for redaction by 80–92%. ⁸⁴ The Policing Productivity Review, Policing Productivity Review, Home Office, 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-productivity-review/policing-productivity-review-accessible  Recent Home Office research across 16 police forces found estimated efficiency savings of up to 60%. ⁸⁵ Accelerated Capability Environment, ‘Creating a 60% efficiency boost for policing’, 7 October 2025, www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/creating-a-60-efficiency-boost-for-policing  Applied nationally, this could save up to 462,000 hours of investigator time a year – equivalent to around 266 full-time investigators. ⁸⁶ The Policing Productivity Review, Policing Productivity Review, Home Office, 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-productivity-review/policing-productivity-review-accessible  Even if these tools are successfully rolled out more widely, however, managing the quantities of unused material now included in case files will continue to place a significant burden on investigators.

Efforts to reduce non-crime demand on the police seem to be meeting with some success, but are heavily reliant on effective partnership working

There is also demand on policing that is not directly related to crime, including policing protests and other public events, responding to traffic collisions, and responding to non-crime incidents, such as mental health crises. This is extremely difficult to quantify, but the police inspectorate has argued that this area of demand grew during the 2010s, ⁸⁷ HM Chief Inspector of the Constabulary, State of policing: The annual assessment of policing in England and Wales 2018, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, 2023, https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/state-of-policing-the-annual-assessment-of-policing-in-england-and-wales-2018  partly in response to cutbacks in other services. ⁸⁸ His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, Policing and Mental Health Picking Up the Pieces, 2018, https://assets-hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/uploads/policing-and-mental-health-picking-up-the-pieces.pdf

In 2022, all 43 police forces across England and Wales agreed to implement a practice called ‘Right Care, Right Person’. This approach aims to make sure people with health and/or social care needs are responded to by the person best equipped to meet their needs – most commonly, health and social care services – and so reduce demand on the police. ⁸⁹ Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care, ‘Evaluating the implementation of Right Care, Right Person’, 2024, www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluating-the-implementation-of-right-care-right-person/right-care-right-person  It does, however, rely on local health and care services being available to respond in the absence of the police.

Early results from this programme seem positive, with a joint Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care evaluation finding that Right Care, Right Person had successfully reduced police time spent on related incidents and calls from other services, as well as improving collaboration with partners in most areas. ⁹⁰ Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care, ‘Evaluating the implementation of Right Care, Right Person’, 2024, www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluating-the-implementation-of-right-care-right-person/right-care-right-person  However, the benefits seem to be inconsistent across forces, depending on the quality of joint working between the force and NHS bodies locally. ⁹¹ Institute for Government interview, 2025. ^{, 92} Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care, ‘Evaluating the implementation of Right Care, Right Person’, 2024, www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluating-the-implementation-of-right-care-right-person/right-care-right-person

This is typical of the way demand on the police is heavily influenced by the performance of, and relationships with, other services, including housing, children’s services and health services, among others. For example, the increase in children in the care system with very complex needs is likely to have a knock-on effect on policing, both in terms of offending and in safeguarding vulnerable children.^* Managing this demand appropriately and ensuring the best possible outcomes for children requires good communication, information-sharing and trust among the multiple agencies involved.

_{*    For example, children subject to deprivation of liberty orders have often had contact with the police due to concerns about exploitation or offending, or children going missing. See e.g. Children’s Commissioner, Children with complex needs who are deprived of liberty, 2024, https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2024/11/cc-deprivation-of-liberty.pdf}

Long-term declines in charges and other positive outcomes have been principally driven by the fall in crime, though officer numbers and crime complexity have also played a role

Since Labour was last in government, there has been a large fall in the number of charges recorded by police forces. This began in the early 2000s and accelerated from around 2014/15, before beginning to reverse in 2021/22. It has continued to climb since then, and in 2024/25 is likely to have surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time. But total charges were still more than a quarter (27%) lower than when Labour left power in 2009/10. Total positive outcomes – any outcome where an offender is identified and sanctioned, including cautions, penalty notices for disorder, community resolutions and diversionary activity – have followed a similar pattern, but with an even larger fall and a smaller recovery, leaving them down 39% on 2009/10 in 2024/25. ⁹³ Home Office, ‘Police outcomes open data’, various years.

This decline has been the source of significant criticism and political concern, especially given the rise in police recorded crime over the last 10 years. ⁹⁴ The Labour Party, Change, 2024, retrieved 8 October 2025, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Labour-Party-manifesto-2024.pdf ^{, 95} Shaw D, ‘Crime solving rates ‘woefully low’, Met Police Commissioner says’, BBC News, 26 June 2019, retrieved 9 October 2025, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48780585  Numerous arguments have been made to explain the fall, including declining police officer and staff numbers, shortages of investigators, growing complexity of crime and evidence, changes in police prioritisation and workload, and officer inexperience. ⁹⁶ Cole C, Richardson V, Flanagan L, Diver M, Almond S and Feist A, Identifying factors associated with changes in charge volumes: a statistical analysis, Home Office, 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/identifying-factors-associated-with-changes-in-charge-volumes/identifying-factors-associated-with-changes-in-charg… ^{, 97} Redgrave H, Justice denied: How the government can change its approach to catching and convicting offenders, 2021, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, https://institute.global/insights/geopolitics-and-security/justice-denied-how-government-can-change-its-approach-catching-and-convicting-offenders  These are all likely to play a role, and unpicking them is challenging. But one major, underappreciated factor driving falling charges is falling crime.

The drop in positive outcomes recorded closely mirrors the fall in estimated crime incidents. Arrests also show a very similar pattern. ⁹⁸ Home Office, ‘Police powers and procedures England and Wales statistics’, ‘Stop and search, arrests and mental health detentions, March 2024’, 2025.  Crucially, positive outcomes are much more closely related to estimated crimes than to the number of police officers or staff, police funding, or recorded crimes per officer (a measure of police workload). This suggests that underlying crime rates have had a meaningful impact on the number of offences charged or issued with another positive outcome by the police.

What makes this rather surprising is that only a small proportion of recorded crimes (and an even smaller proportion of all crimes that occur) result in a positive outcome. In 2024/25, just 13% of all outcomes recorded were a charge or other positive outcome. ⁹⁹ Home Office, ‘Police outcomes open data, year ending March 2025’, 2025  Given this, it might be expected that falling crime would have little impact on the number of positive outcomes: there are still many recorded crimes, currently unsolved, that could be investigated.

However, it may be the case that the proportion of ‘solvable’ crime is fairly consistent over time. When it comes to ‘volume crime’ – relatively low-level offences like theft and criminal damage that make up the large majority of crime – the police have limited capacity for investigation. This may mean they only charge or issue an out-of-court resolution in cases that have a readily identifiable offender. This interpretation is supported by the large proportion of offences where there is minimal investigation: in 2024/25, half of offences that were closed with the investigation complete and no suspect identified were closed within five days, and 78% within 30 days. ¹⁰⁰ Home Office, ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2024 to 2025’, 2025.  As long as the proportion of offences where an offender is easily identified with minimal investigation remains fairly constant over time, this would explain why charges would fall with the overall crime rate.

This is not to argue that other factors do not also affect the number of positive outcomes achieved. Particularly when it comes to more serious, less common offences like rape or serious violence, case complexity, growing volumes of evidence, and inexperienced or overloaded officers are likely to make a big difference to effective investigations and charges. But these make up only a small proportion of all crime, and of positive outcomes.

Recent increases in positive outcomes are likely influenced by a combination of more police officers after the police uplift programme, new officers becoming more experienced and productive, and strong pressure – from the government, police and crime commissioners, and the police inspectorate – to improve positive outcomes, ¹⁰¹ Institute for Government interviews, 2025. particularly following the increase in officer numbers. The uptick in crime in the past two years may also have contributed to more positive outcomes being achieved.

It is now taking the police much longer to achieve a positive outcome for offences

The combination of increasing crime complexity, additional requirements for case file preparation, long waits for forensic evidence analysis and more inexperienced officers has led to big increases in the time it takes to record a positive outcome, particularly charges and formal out-of-court resolutions such as cautions. The median number of days between an offence being committed and a charge recorded has gone from 14 in 2015/16 to 41 in 2024/25: an increase of almost four weeks. ¹⁰² Home Office, ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2024 to 2025’, 2025.  This rise is all the more striking given that the number of positive outcomes recorded per officer has dropped substantially, from 6.9 in 2015/16 to 4.9 in 2024/25 – so in theory officers should have more time to devote to each case. ¹⁰³ Home Office, ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2024 to 2025’, 2025. ^{, 104} Home Office, ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025’, 2025.

The time taken to record other outcomes, such as the case being closed due to evidential difficulties or prosecution not being in the public interest, has not increased anything like as much. ¹⁰⁵ Home Office, ‘Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2024 to 2025’, 2025.  This suggests that the additional work that now needs to be done pre-charge before sharing the case file with the CPS is a big contributor to overall delays. Crucially, this does not seem to be just moving the delay from one part of the system to another: the time from charge to first listing for cases in the magistrates’ courts remained fairly flat from 2016 to 2019, and has now returned to a similar level, after a small increase from 2020 to 2022. ¹⁰⁶ Ministry of Justice, ‘Criminal court statistics quarterly: January to March 2025’, 2025.

Low levels of trust and confidence continue to be major problems for policing

According to YouGov polling, confidence in the police to tackle crime fell markedly in 2021/22 and 2022/23, and has since plateaued at this low level. The change is particularly notable at the margins, with the proportion of people who say they have a lot of confidence in the police almost halving from 2019/20 to 2024/25 (down from 7% to 4%). The proportion who say they have no confidence at all rose from 9% to 16% over the same period. ¹⁰⁷ YouGov, ‘How much confidence Brits have in police to deal with crime’, retrieved 30 June 2025, https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/how-much-confidence-brits-have-in-police-to-deal-with-crime

Over the longer term, the proportion of people saying the local police are doing a good or excellent job has fallen since around 2017/18, and has returned to below the 50% mark last seen in the mid-2000s. ¹⁰⁸ Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025. There is no observable relationship nationally between either the crime rate, the number of crimes with a positive outcome or the total number of officers and the proportion of people who say the police are doing a good job locally. Instead, declining confidence is likely to be driven principally by multiple, highly publicised incidents of serious misconduct by police officers and by perceptions that the police are not responding to crime effectively. ¹⁰⁹ Hanway P and Hambly O, Public perceptions of policing: A review of research and literature, Home Office, 2023, www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-perceptions-of-policing-a-review-of-research-and-literature/public-perceptions-of-policing-a-review-of-rese… Negative contact with the police, such as feeling that they do not take a crime report seriously, or are biased or unfair, is also very damaging to trust and confidence. These kinds of interactions may also have wider impacts than previously, as word spreads further on social media. A more generalised decline in trust in institutions – a problem that is not unique to the UK ¹¹⁰ Gibbs L and Mutebi N, Trust, public engagement and UK Parliament, POSTbrief 66, House of Commons, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PB-0066/POST-PB-0066.pdf  – is also likely to be contributing to this. ¹¹¹ King’s College London, ‘UK has internationally low confidence in political institutions, police and press’, 30 March 2023, www.kcl.ac.uk/news/uk-has-internationally-low-confidence-in-political-institutions-police-and-press

There is significant variation across forces in levels of public confidence, though small sample sizes make it hard to identify which areas are statistically significantly different from the average. Gwent has the lowest rating with just 39% of people saying the local force was doing a good or excellent job in 2024/25, compared with a maximum of 62% in North Yorkshire. By contrast, there is relatively little variation in ratings of the police by demographic characteristics: women and men gave very similar ratings, and Asian and Black people were more likely to say the local police are doing a good or excellent job (both 55%) than White people (48%).^{*, 112} Office for National Statistics, ‘Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables’, March 2025.  However, small sample sizes mean these figures should be interpreted with caution.

Low levels of trust and confidence are not only bad for legitimacy and public support, they can also seriously impede the ability of the police to do their job. Community co-operation, whether in reporting crime, providing information on suspects and supporting investigations, or simply relying on the police to solve disputes rather than taking matters into their own hands, is crucial to police performance. Without this support, it can be extremely challenging to progress investigations and resolve crime – with further knock-on effects on local confidence. ¹¹³ Karn J, Policing and crime reduction: The evidence and its implications for practice, The Police Foundation, 2013, https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/police-foundation-police-effectiveness-report.pdf ^{, 114} College of Policing, ‘Engagement and communication’, 23 October 2013, retrieved 8 October 2025, www.college.police.uk/app/engagement-and-communication

_{*    Thirty-nine per cent of Mixed ethnicity respondents said the police were doing a good or excellent job, but this is based on a small sample size. In 2023/24, 48% of Mixed ethnicity respondents gave a good or excellent rating, the same as for White respondents.}

The government has yet to set out its police reform programme in detail, but there are tensions with its broader agenda for more local public services

In November 2024, the then home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced a significant programme of police reform, with a white paper to follow in the spring. ¹¹⁵ Home Office, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, ‘Home Secretary announces major policing reforms’, 19 November 2024, www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-announces-major-policing-reforms  That white paper has still not been published, but the initial reforms announced featured a stronger central grip on police priorities and performance from the Home Office, a new National Centre of Policing to take on certain national capabilities, and an emphasis on neighbourhood policing. ¹¹⁶ Home Office, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, ‘Home Secretary announces major policing reforms’, 19 November 2024, www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-announces-major-policing-reforms  It is hard to assess how effectively these changes will address the performance problems in policing or further the safer streets mission without more detail. Some elements are definitely positive. Better co-ordination of IT, procurement and data-sharing through a National Centre of Policing would be welcome and should improve efficiency and value for money. ¹¹⁷ The Police Foundation and Leapwise, Fit for the future: The case for a reformed national policing landscape, 2024, https://www.police-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/policing-landscape.pdf  There is also evidence that neighbourhood policing can build public trust and deter neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour, as long as it is combined with community engagement and effective problem-solving. ¹¹⁸ College of Policing, ‘What words: implementing neighbourhood policing’, 22 April 2025, retrieved 9 October 2025, www.college.police.uk/guidance/improving-public-confidence-police/what-works-implementing-neighbourhood-policing

But there is tension between greater central control over police performance and priorities and the government’s commitment to more devolved public services. Forces can only prioritise so many things at once, and increasing performance monitoring by the Home Office will likely reduce the latitude chief constables and police and crime commissioners have to set local priorities. Likewise, neighbourhood policing works when it can respond effectively to local concerns. ¹¹⁹ College of Policing, ‘What words: implementing neighbourhood policing’, 22 April 2025, retrieved 9 October 2025, www.college.police.uk/guidance/improving-public-confidence-police/what-works-implementing-neighbourhood-policing  That requires not only having enough officers in neighbourhood roles, but also having the right balance of other officer and staff roles across the force. Increasing central direction of the make-up and deployment of officers and staff will make this harder to achieve.

None of this is to say that the reforms will necessarily fail, or harm performance. There is a balance to be struck between local ownership and oversight on the one hand, and central direction and co-ordination on the other. But chief officers and police and crime commissioners are still in the dark about what this balance will look like and how they should be directing their own forces. The ongoing delay to the white paper is only dragging out this uncertainty.