Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 28
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)
We asked how the government’s commitment to put 13,000 extra personnel into neighbourhood policing roles by 2029 will be funded. The government provided £200 million in 2025–26 to recruit 3,000 additional neighbourhood 69 Q 115 70 Q 130 71 Q 67 72 Q 7; C&AG’s Report, para 1.12 73 C&AG’s Report, para 1.9 74 Q 78; C&AG’s Report, para 2.15 and 3.20 75 Qq 79, 118 76 Q 112 77 Qq 22, 114; C&AG’s Report, para 2.14 16 policing personnel (police officers and police community support officers) and the Home Office told us it is confident that forces will achieve this.78 However, forces do not yet know what funding will be provided from 2026–27 onwards and, in November 2025, the Home Office was still working to develop an affordable plan to deliver the government’s commitment. The Home Office said it was managing the neighbourhood policing grant on an annual basis and will announce arrangements for future years before the end of 2025, as part of the provisional police funding settlement.79
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.