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SP6

Police use of unarmed officers in immediate threat

Southport Inquiry · The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · Issued 13 April 2026 · Addressed to: All police forces

Government responseHome Office: Accepted (Jul 2026)

DeliveryNo statement from All police forces found

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

All police forces should ensure that their policies, guidance and training address taking on a calculated degree of risk in recognition of the immediate need to protect the public from an obvious risk to life. This may involve the decision to deploy unarmed officers with caution.

Southport Inquiry, The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · 13 Apr 2026 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In July 2026, HM Government stated that the police must lead activity to respond to the inquiry's policing recommendations due to their operational independence, noting that the Home Office had written to the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing and would monitor delivery over the coming months while regular implementation reports are requested (Home Office response, Jul 2026). The record holds no update since HM Government's response of July 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026).

Sources

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

The government's response to Phase 1 (CP 1623, 2 July 2026) agreed with all 67 recommendations in one sentence, and names only 39 of them individually. Where a recommendation is not named, the response shown is the passage the response gives for the group it belongs to (the recommendations for organisations outside central government, or the recommendations to policing bodies), which is not a response to that recommendation alone; the response does not list the members of any group. The 10 recommendations for Phase 2 of the Inquiry to consider show no response: the response introduces them (paragraph 20) but answers none of them. The government accepts the recommendations that are for central government to deliver. Where a recommendation is for an organisation outside central government, the government's agreement is not that organisation's acceptance.

Government response

●Home Office · Accepted · 2 Jul 2026

Words of: HM Government, Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry (CP 1623), presented to Parliament by the Home Secretary, 2 July 2026

The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure, and the Police play a fundamental role in doing so. The Chair makes several recommendations to policing bodies, in Chapter 7 of his report and elsewhere. The police remain operationally independent of the Home Office and so it is right that the police lead activity to respond to these recommendations and observations. Where recommendations are shared with central government departments, we will deliver these in partnership and drive activity to address the Chair’s concerns.
90. The Home Office has written to the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing setting out the relevant recommendations. Home Office officials will work with these organisations to report on delivery of the recommendations, and the Home Secretary will ask the National Police Chiefs’ Council to regularly report back on how the key policing measures are being implemented. The Home Office will work with policing over the coming months to monitor progress on delivering these recommendations. Where recommendations are made for a particular force, we expect policing to consider how they can apply to the rest of the country.

Extract from: Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry

Site note: The source gives this passage once, for paragraphs 89 and 90 of its section on policing, the Chair's recommendations to policing bodies. The response does not list those recommendations or name this one; the site places it in the group because the recommendation is addressed to a police force. The same words are recorded on SP6, SP7, SP17, SP26, SP27, SP28 and SP29.

Delivery

No statement on delivery from All police forces has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.