Recommendation 2

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.