By 27 March 2025, the Home Office should work with the College of Policing, the NPCC lead for stalking and harassment and the National Stalking Consortium to update information on stalking, aligning crime recording rules with Stalking Protection Act guidance.
Report on the Suzy Lamplugh Trust's super-complaint: The police response to stalking
Published 27 September 2024Super-complaintJoint with College of Policing, IOPC19 recommendations
Joint investigation into police response to stalking following super-complaint by National Stalking Consortium via Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Found failures in identification, investigation and use of powers. All 43 forces published action plans by November 2024.
Coverage
The organisations covered are not linked in this record. Check the original report for its scope and addressees.
Recommendations
By 27 March 2025, where required, chief constables should seek changes to their crime recording systems to enable staff and officers to document and search for crimes not recorded as the principal crime, with stalking and related offences fully searchable.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should review and update their learning and training provision relating to stalking to meet national policing curriculum outcomes, incorporate College of Policing e-learning, use external expertise, include local policies, and provide training to relevant personnel.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should make sure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to fully understand the scale and types of stalking behaviour, including problem profiles, audits, victim feedback, and force management statements reflecting stalking demand.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should take steps to make sure that risk identification, assessment and management is effective in all stalking and breaches of orders cases, through screening tools, clear policies, recognition of breach risks, and screening processes for early identification.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should take steps to make sure that force strategies, structures and processes are in place so that police consider a Stalking Protection Order (SPO) in every stalking case, and apply for an SPO where relevant and appropriate.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should take steps to make sure stalking victims receive the rights they are entitled to under the victim's code and have access to support services, including ensuring their force has appropriate processes to inform all stalking victims about their rights, making information about national and specialist stalking support services easily available, ensuring timely referrals to appropriate services, and monitoring the number of stalking victims referred to specialist support services.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables and police and crime commissioners should work together to review commissioning arrangements and embed collaborative working and information sharing between policing and victim support services.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should make sure the new College of Policing investigations APP content on case allocation is reflected in stalking and breach policies, supporting allocation to skilled officers considering risk and complexity.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should take steps to improve the quality of stalking investigations by taking a victim-centred, suspect-focused and context-led approach, ensuring their workforce has the capacity and capability to undertake effective stalking investigations, that all reasonable lines of enquiry are pursued with good supervision, and that arrest and search powers are used to gather evidence.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should take steps to improve how their force effectively recognises and responds to online elements of stalking by understanding online behaviour scale, including cyber-stalking in training, providing online safety advice, and procuring appropriate digital safeguarding tools.
By 27 March 2025, the NPCC lead for stalking and harassment should collate and disseminate information to chief constables on the dedicated stalking co-ordination roles that exist across policing.
By 27 September 2025, chief constables should, using the information collated by the NPCC lead under recommendation 21, consider whether and how dedicated stalking officers, staff, or subject matter experts can be used to support their force's response to stalking.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should implement a mechanism for early screening of crimes to improve the identification, recording and management of all stalking cases, including screening for harassment, malicious communications, and breach crimes.
By 27 March 2025, the NPCC lead for stalking and harassment should begin working with the NPCC lead for artificial intelligence to explore how artificial intelligence could be used to develop a proof of concept for identifying stalking incidents and risks.
By 27 March 2025, chief constables should explore opportunities to improve how their force works with partners to contribute to a multi-agency response to stalking, including healthcare, CPS, probation collaboration, inter-force collaboration, and MAPPA utilisation for stalking offender management.
By 22 November 2024 (56 days from publication), chief constables and police and crime commissioners should write to HMICFRS, the IOPC and the College of Policing setting out their response to the recommendations.
By 30 March 2025 (six months from publication), chief constables and police and crime commissioners should publish an action plan on their force website setting out the steps they are taking in response to the recommendations.
By 27 June 2025 (nine months from publication), the NPCC should share a report summarising the progress forces have made against their action plans.