Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 6
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The outdated and piecemeal approach to funding police forces is frustrating efforts to secure long-term productivity improvements.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
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.