Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 59
59
Accepted
Paragraph: 155
Policing mission creep requires urgent cross-Government action to address its scope.
Conclusion
Policing faces challenges in delivering its core mission. Simultaneously it has become “the service of last resort for people in crisis.” We agree with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing that tackling this mission creep “requires cross-Government working.”
Government Response Summary
The government details current initiatives like the National Partnership Agreement and Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) rollout, alongside efforts to improve police productivity and reduce bureaucratic burden, as actions addressing the challenge of police mission creep. These measures are expected to save significant police officer time.
Paragraph Reference:
155
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
In July 2023 we published the National Partnership Agreement, which provides a framework of actions that local areas can take to roll out the mental health elements of the Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) approach to ensure people in need of mental health care are responded to by an appropriate person. Every territorial police force in England and Wales will be implementing RCRP. If all forces in England realised time savings similar to those reported by Humberside Police, which initially developed RCRP, this could save around one million hours of police officer time per year. We commissioned a study into police productivity which estimates that 38 million hours per year could be saved by improving productivity within policing. We continue to work with police to consider the recommendations from the National Police Chiefs Council’s (NPCC) Policing Productivity Review and determine what further actions can be taken to realise the estimated savings. And we are reducing bureaucratic burden related to crime recording. This includes reinstating the principal offence rule for behavioural crimes to allow a focus on the most impactive offence and increasing the threshold for malicious communications crimes to ensure that they are only recorded when the threshold of a crime is met, rather than when someone is merely offended by something often posted on social media. The NPCC review team believe that these changes could save up to 443,000 police officer hours every year.