Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
63rd Report - Increasing police productivity
Published 28 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Increasing police productivity All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
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.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 63rd Report - Increasing police productivity (HC 1239), 28 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 7 April 2026 (deadline 28 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on every recommendation, marking some as implemented and setting target dates for others.
- On performance data, 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 its plans for public reporting of performance data.
- On officer numbers, the officer maintenance grant and the requirement to achieve officer headcount targets "has been abolished from 1 April 2026". The government adds that prioritising neighbourhood policing "may place some limitations on workforce flexibility" which the Home Office "will keep under review".
- On efficiency savings, the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme has "an annual cashable efficiencies target of £354 million by 2028-29". Mandating approaches to policing "will be considered where there is a case to do so".
- On police IT systems, the government gives a target implementation date of December 2029. It says the National Police Service, once established, "will consider these recommendations further then", and that force-level IT updates "must align" with the implementation of force mergers.