Recommendations & Conclusions
14 items
2
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
The Home Office does not understand how wider policy changes affect the demand on police resources. Police forces face growing demands as they take on additional responsibilities and tackle increasing volumes of more complex crimes, for example, the number of fraud crimes, sexual offences, and stalking and harassment offences, which …
Read more
The Home Office does not understand how wider policy changes affect the demand on police resources. Police forces face growing demands as they take on additional responsibilities and tackle increasing volumes of more complex crimes, for example, the number of fraud crimes, sexual offences, and stalking and harassment offences, which require specialist expertise, has increased from 768,000 in 2014–15 (18% of police recorded crime) to 2.1 million in 2024–25 (32%). Despite this, the Home Office and policing do not fully understand the implications of changing demands. 2 Reforms to the criminal justice system, such as the sentencing review and probation reforms, will affect the demands on policing. The Home Office has improved its working arrangements with the Ministry of Justice but, seven months after the sentencing review, it has still not quantified the impact of reforms on police. The Home Office has not established similar collaborative working arrangements with other departments, or local government, to ensure impacts of policy changes on policing are properly considered. recommendation In its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out the arrangements it has established—across departments, local government and policing stakeholders—to identify and quantify the impact of policy changes affecting policing.
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government states the recommendation is implemented, citing the Police Reform White Paper and existing Consolidated Budgeting Guidance for considering policy impacts on policing. It is currently working with policing stakeholders and relevant departments to assess existing processes and identify necessary changes to manage these …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
3
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
Police forces have limited flexibility to recruit people with the skills they need. Since the Police Uplift Programme was established in 2019, the government has ringfenced funding on the condition that forces maintain officer numbers, allocating £270 million to forces in 2025–26 via the officer maintenance grant. It has also …
Read more
Police forces have limited flexibility to recruit people with the skills they need. Since the Police Uplift Programme was established in 2019, the government has ringfenced funding on the condition that forces maintain officer numbers, allocating £270 million to forces in 2025–26 via the officer maintenance grant. It has also provided £200 million to deliver an additional 3,000 personnel into neighbourhood policing roles. Consequently, police forces have responded to financial pressures by reducing the number of civilian staff and using police officers in staff roles. Police forces have also found it difficult to recruit and retain specialist staff, which restricts their ability to implement new technologies and respond to the changing nature of crime. Stakeholders have also highlighted that the current workforce mix, skills gaps and poor workforce well-being result in lost capacity and undermine productivity. recommendation The Home Office should work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to assess the implications of the existing focus on maintaining police officer numbers, including identifying the impact on personnel and the operational efficiency of forces. Within six months, the Home Office should write to the Committee with the results of this assessment, including the options to improve workforce flexibility and the potential benefits for policing.
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government states it has assessed the implications of maintaining police officer numbers, concluding that the officer maintenance grant was a barrier to visible policing. As a result, the grant and officer headcount targets will be abolished from April 2026 to improve workforce flexibility and …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
4
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
The Home Office has not established how it will achieve the planned savings in its police efficiency and collaboration programme. The Home Office has identified £354 million of potential savings over the period to 2028–29 but recognises that achieving this is high risk. As at November 2025, the Home Office …
Read more
The Home Office has not established how it will achieve the planned savings in its police efficiency and collaboration programme. The Home Office has identified £354 million of potential savings over the period to 2028–29 but recognises that achieving this is high risk. As at November 2025, the Home Office had not established how it would fund its savings programme and some initiatives will require legislative change. The Home Office believes it will achieve the planned savings by 2028–29 3 but was unable to explain to us the practical steps needed to achieve lasting changes in working practices across all police forces. The lack of standardisation across police forces is inefficient and represents poor value for money, with the Home Office expecting to achieve half of the savings from commercial efficiencies. However, it has not yet established the scope for standardisation and how it will engage police forces to achieve change. The Home Secretary has powers to mandate forces and/ or specify requirements but these have rarely been used, with the Home Office saying it needs to be confident that mandating would be beneficial for police forces. Without the right data and monitoring systems, it will be difficult for the Home Office to track and assess what progress is being made and how savings are being achieved. recommendation In its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out by when it expects to achieve its planned efficiency savings. In doing so, it should: a. provide details on how it will achieve savings, including the areas in which it is seeking standardisation, which forces are using procurement frameworks, and the areas in which it is planning to mandate greater consistency across policing; and b. set out how it will ensure that claimed savings meet HM Treasury requirements.
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government states the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme (PECP) targets £354 million in cashable efficiencies by 2028-29, and thousands of officer hours saved. It details how savings will be achieved through commercial strategies, productivity improvements, data, and shared services, confirming targets were agreed with …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
5
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
It is taking too long to identify and scale-up innovative practices and roll-out new technologies to improve police productivity. There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies—including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response—but scaling these across all 43 police forces has been slow. The …
Read more
It is taking too long to identify and scale-up innovative practices and roll-out new technologies to improve police productivity. There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies—including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response—but scaling these across all 43 police forces has been slow. The Home Office is implementing some of the changes from the 2023 Policing Productivity Review but has reduced funding to support the roll-out of new technologies from £105 million in 2024–25 to £50 million in 2025–26. As around 80% of police funding is committed to staff pay costs, police forces have limited flexibility to invest in new technologies and have been forced to increase their borrowing to fund their capital programmes. The College of Policing acknowledged that the large number of bodies involved in the roll-out of innovative practices, including identifying and scaling innovations with the greatest potential, was not the most effective way of operating. There is also scope to improve police productivity by streamlining processes. The College of Policing has developed a diagnostic tool to help police forces identify opportunities, in areas such as burglary, but its launch has been delayed. 4 recommendation The Home Office should provide the Committee with an update in six months on the steps it has taken to speed up the adoption of new technologies and support police forces to improve their productivity. This should include setting out: a. the digital technologies with the greatest potential and how it is supporting their wider adoption; b. how it will support the College of Policing to identify innovations with the greatest potential; c. how it will simplify the arrangements for approving and rolling-out new technologies; and d. the results of using the new diagnostic tool to assess the scope for productivity improvements from streamlining police processes, including the potential benefits identi
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government agrees and is accelerating the adoption of new technologies by supporting the College of Policing, prioritising key digital technologies like AI and data analytics, and scaling productivity-enabling systems nationally. It will consider further recommendations as part of implementing force mergers.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
6
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
The outdated and piecemeal approach to funding police forces is frustrating efforts to secure long-term productivity improvements. In November 2025, the Home Office was still working to develop an affordable plan to increase the number of personnel in neighbourhood policing roles by 13,000 by 2029. The government provided £200 million …
Read more
The outdated and piecemeal approach to funding police forces is frustrating efforts to secure long-term productivity improvements. In November 2025, the Home Office was still working to develop an affordable plan to increase the number of personnel in neighbourhood policing roles by 13,000 by 2029. The government provided £200 million in 2025–26 to recruit 3,000 additional personnel but forces do not know what funding will be provided from 2026–27 onwards. The Home Office is still using the out-dated police funding formula, which our predecessor Committee recommended be reformed in 2015. The formula was revised 5 in 2013 but subsequent demographic changes and regional variations in precept funding have created increasing financial pressures in some forces, with Bedfordshire Police and Warwickshire Police, for example, seeing government funding per capita fall by nearly 12% since 2015. We were also concerned that funding allocations did not reflect the needs of rural forces. Since 2023–24, the Home Office has provided £123 million of emergency funding to help some forces manage pressures. The new White Paper will be an important step in setting out the Home Office’s vision for policing reform. It offers the opportunity to clarify the leadership role the Home Office will play and how forces will be held to account following the abolition of police and crime commissioners. recommendation After the publication of the White Paper on police reforms, the Home Office should write to the Committee setting out how the new accountability arrangements will support it in leading the policing system to improve its productivity and deliver government’s policy commitments. In doing so, it should: a. set out in detail the new governance arrangements that will replace police and crime commissioners in those areas where there is no regional mayor; and b. explain how it will revise existing funding arrangements to provide police forces with an equitable and stable basis from which to m
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government accepted the recommendation, noting the publication of the Police Reform White Paper detailing new governance arrangements and a review of the police funding formula following an independent review of force structures. The Home Office also confirmed it wrote to the Committee with further …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
7
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
We asked the Home Office whether it has the data it needs to understand the financial risks facing police forces and the impact that this has on police productivity.9 The Home Office said there are multiple datasets scattered across bodies in the policing system, including police forces. It told us …
Read more
We asked the Home Office whether it has the data it needs to understand the financial risks facing police forces and the impact that this has on police productivity.9 The Home Office said there are multiple datasets scattered across bodies in the policing system, including police forces. It told us that a single dataset would better enable data sharing, with forces currently sharing data through manual returns, which is slow, resource intensive and means data can be weeks or months old.10 HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) collects data—including on the efficiency of forces—as part of its inspections. It publishes some of this data, but the Home Office told us it does not share all the data it holds.11 The Home Office said it is getting more detailed data and expects data quality to improve as part of its data reforms.12
Show less
Government response AI summary
The Home Office will write to the Committee by July 2026 setting out the key metrics it will incorporate in future iterations of the Police Performance Framework, and plans for public reporting of performance data.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
8
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
In 2015, our predecessor Committee concluded that the Home Office’s “hands off” approach to monitoring police forces had limited its ability to ensure value for money.13 The Home Office told us it is now adopting a stronger central role and has established a Police Standards and Performance Improvements Directorate. As …
Read more
In 2015, our predecessor Committee concluded that the Home Office’s “hands off” approach to monitoring police forces had limited its ability to ensure value for money.13 The Home Office told us it is now adopting a stronger central role and has established a Police Standards and Performance Improvements Directorate. As part of this, it will introduce a new police performance framework and performance dashboard to improve its understanding of what is happening in forces and hold them to account.14 The Home Office told us that it is also investing in better understanding the financial pressures facing police forces.15 In 2025, it analysed the financial resilience of forces, although did not assess the root causes of financial pressures or impacts on operational decisions.16 The Home Office told us that that it needs to do more work to understand the specific context of individual forces.17
Show less
Government response AI summary
The Home Office will write to the Committee by July 2026 setting out the key metrics it will incorporate in future iterations of the Police Performance Framework, and plans for public reporting of performance data.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
9
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
Written evidence from Leapwise raised the importance of having a measure of police productivity to assess and reward police forces. It noted that the absence of such a measure has meant that the current decline in police productivity is hidden.18 The Home Office told us that it has not yet …
Read more
Written evidence from Leapwise raised the importance of having a measure of police productivity to assess and reward police forces. It noted that the absence of such a measure has meant that the current decline in police productivity is hidden.18 The Home Office told us that it has not yet agreed a measure of police productivity or what metrics it will use to track this, due to difficulties measuring policing outputs. It is working with the ONS and police forces to determine how to measure police outputs.19 9 Qq 14, 18-19 10 Qq 19-20 11 Q 10 12 Qq 13, 20 13 Committee of Public Accounts, Financial sustainability of police forces in England and Wales, First Report of Session 2015–16, HC 288, 9 September 2015 14 Q 121; C&AG’s Report, para 1.3 15 Q 12 16 C&AG’s Report, para 1.17 17 Q 12 18 Leapwise (IPP0013) 19 Qq 80, 84 9
Show less
Government response AI summary
The Home Office will write to the Committee by July 2026 setting out the key metrics it will incorporate in future iterations of the Police Performance Framework, and plans for public reporting of performance data.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
10
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
We asked the Home Office about its plans for publishing data on the performance of police forces. Written evidence from The Productivity Institute highlighted that ‘public trust’ is an important productivity outcome.20 The College of Policing agreed that the antidote to public mistrust is transparency and openness.21 The Home Office …
Read more
We asked the Home Office about its plans for publishing data on the performance of police forces. Written evidence from The Productivity Institute highlighted that ‘public trust’ is an important productivity outcome.20 The College of Policing agreed that the antidote to public mistrust is transparency and openness.21 The Home Office accepted that transparency can drive behaviour change and said its police performance framework will be published, although it did not yet know which particular datasets it would publish, or when, as this is a decision for ministers.22 The changing demands on policing
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government has published the first iteration of the Police Performance Framework and will write to the Committee by July 2026 setting out the key metrics it will incorporate in future iterations and plans for public reporting of performance data to support greater transparency.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
15
Conclusion
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
A number of stakeholders identified that the officer maintenance grant has led to police forces increasingly using officers in staff roles (that do not require a warranted police officer) – an expensive and inefficient practice.34 In written evidence, Leapwise estimated that this practice is costing policing at least £55 million …
Read more
A number of stakeholders identified that the officer maintenance grant has led to police forces increasingly using officers in staff roles (that do not require a warranted police officer) – an expensive and inefficient practice.34 In written evidence, Leapwise estimated that this practice is costing policing at least £55 million a year.35 We were concerned that this approach to funding police officers may be incentivising practices that deliver poor value for money. The Home Office acknowledged that successive governments 28 Q 60 29 Q 59 30 Letter from the College of Policing, 8 December 2025 31 Q 59 32 C&AG’s Report, para 1.6; Q 52 33 Q 34 34 Sir Stephen House QPM (IPP0008); City of London Police IPP0010; Leapwise (IPP0013) 35 Leapwise (IPP0013) 11 have chosen to incentivise police forces to recruit officers through grant arrangements.36 We asked the Home Office whether it understood how skewed the deployment of police officers in staff roles is. It told us that it is for chief constables to decide the balance of police staff and officers, but it is seeking better quality data about how forces are using officers. However, the Home Office said that it had made £75 million available in 2025–26 for forces to spend on resourcing, whether on staff or on police community support officers and officers.37
Show less
Government response AI summary
The officer maintenance grant and the requirement to achieve officer headcount targets has been abolished from 1 April 2026, and has allocated £363 million of ringfenced funding to incentivise forces to grow neighbourhood policing teams towards the aim of 13,000 additional personnel in neighbourhood roles …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
18
Conclusion
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
Written evidence from Leapwise, Sir Stephen House and the City of London Police all highlighted how an inflexible workforce model can undermine police productivity.42 Leapwise highlighted how poor workforce wellbeing is reducing workforce capacity, identifying that the proportion of police officers on long-term sick leave has increased from 1.5% in …
Read more
Written evidence from Leapwise, Sir Stephen House and the City of London Police all highlighted how an inflexible workforce model can undermine police productivity.42 Leapwise highlighted how poor workforce wellbeing is reducing workforce capacity, identifying that the proportion of police officers on long-term sick leave has increased from 1.5% in March 2021 to 2.2% in 2025, with a 47% increase in officers sick for more than 28 days. This equates to 3,165 officers off-duty for considerable periods, with a cost of approximately £52 million to £92 million a year for policing.43 36 Qq 33, 52 37 Q 51 38 Qq 124, 127 39 ADS Group Ltd (IPP0002) 40 Q 123 41 ADS Group Ltd (IPP0002) 42 Sir Stephen House QPM (IPP0008); City of London Police (IPP0010); Leapwise (IPP0013) 43 Leapwise (IPP0013) 12 2 Improving police efficiency and productivity Implementing the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme
Show less
Government response AI summary
The officer maintenance grant and the requirement to achieve officer headcount targets has been abolished from 1 April 2026, and has allocated £363 million of ringfenced funding to incentivise forces to grow neighbourhood policing teams towards the aim of 13,000 additional personnel in neighbourhood roles …
Read full response →
HM Treasury
19
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
The Labour Party manifesto set out that the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee would be paid for by tackling waste through a Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme.44 The Home Office has identified efficiency savings of £354 million over the period 2025–26 to 2028–29.45 We sought reassurances that the Police Efficiency and Collaboration …
Read more
The Labour Party manifesto set out that the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee would be paid for by tackling waste through a Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme.44 The Home Office has identified efficiency savings of £354 million over the period 2025–26 to 2028–29.45 We sought reassurances that the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme will be more effective than previous attempts to drive efficiency savings across police forces, which were based on forces finding savings from their annual budget allocations.46 The Home Office told us this was a more ambitious programme in which it is seeking to work more closely with police forces and stakeholders. It was confident that that it would achieve the savings by 2028–29 but acknowledged that some deliverables are high risk. For example, some initiatives require legislative change and, at November 2025, it had not established the funding necessary to deliver the programme.47
Show less
Government response AI summary
The Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme (PECP) has an annual cashable efficiencies target of £354 million by 2028-29 and a non-cashable efficiencies target of saving thousands of officer hours to support government priorities such as neighbourhood policing.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
20
Recommendation
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
The Home Office told us that about that half of the planned £354 million of savings will come from commercial savings, such as national purchasing, with the remainder from cost recovery and improved productivity.48 We asked whether there has been any investigation into policing’s purchases of basic services, noting the …
Read more
The Home Office told us that about that half of the planned £354 million of savings will come from commercial savings, such as national purchasing, with the remainder from cost recovery and improved productivity.48 We asked whether there has been any investigation into policing’s purchases of basic services, noting the previous Committee’s work on similar issues in the national health service.49 In written evidence, stakeholders also identified the inefficiency of police forces running separate procurement exercises.50 The Home Office said it is using national purchasing frameworks and seeking to standardise specifications for some equipment, including laptops and vehicles. 44 C&AG’s Report, para 3 45 Q 40 46 Q 70 47 Qq 45, 70; C&AG’s Report, para 2.8 48 Q 70 49 Q 75 50 The Productivity Institute, University of Manchester (IPP0009); Leapwise (IPP0013) 13 It is also working with the Crown Commercial Service on energy purchasing, with 39 forces signed up. However, the Home Office acknowledged that there is no standardisation across the 43 police forces and that it does not know exactly who is doing what. It said it will need up to two years to gather data on the scope for standardisation, the level of variation across forces and whether it was better to purchase nationally, while recognising the benefits of competition between suppliers.51
Show less
Government response AI summary
The Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme (PECP) has an annual cashable efficiencies target of £354 million by 2028-29 and a non-cashable efficiencies target of saving thousands of officer hours to support government priorities such as neighbourhood policing.
Read full response →
HM Treasury
24
Conclusion
63rd Report - Increasing police product…
Accepted
There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies, including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response.62 These technologies can help to improve police productivity and performance. For example, the College of Policing estimated that scaling the use of enhanced video response could save up to …
Read more
There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies, including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response.62 These technologies can help to improve police productivity and performance. For example, the College of Policing estimated that scaling the use of enhanced video response could save up to £25 million and the Metropolitan Police reported that it had made over 1,300 arrests due to live facial recognition since January 2024.63 In its written evidence, the City of London Police highlighted its productivity gains from using an auto-redaction tool in preparing case files for the Crown Prosecution Service.64
Show less
Government response AI summary
The government agrees that it is working to accelerate the adoption of new technologies to improve police productivity by providing financial and practical support to the College of Policing and its Centre for Police Productivity and investing in new secure national infrastructure.
Read full response →
HM Treasury