Independent report

Policing Productivity Review (accessible)

Updated 23 April 2024

Foreword

Policing matters. It matters because the police is the service we all need to know we can rely on, particularly when the worst happens. To keep us safe, and to maintain the rule of law. Officers and staff work hard, day and night, dealing with emergency calls, bringing offenders to justice, and keeping us safe in our communities and our homes.

And yet while there has been considerable investment in policing, there is also significant focus on how policing can improve the outcomes it delivers for the public. This spans across the country, across crime types, and across the millions of interactions the police have with the public every day. We saw great work when we visited each and every police force in the UK during this review. We also saw areas in which productivity gains can improve outcomes for the public.

This review was commissioned in summer 2022, against a backdrop of tens of thousands of new officers, significant challenges to trust and confidence in policing, and greater expectations of our police service.

Productivity matters because it means we are getting the best possible policing service we can from the resources we have available. Good policing is the cornerstone of a safe and thriving society.

In the course of the review, we have helped identify and deliver tangible improvements to the frontline: the changes already agreed in terms of how policing responds to mental health calls and how crime is recorded are freeing up over one million hours.

In this report we make recommendations which would free up more police time: police hours which could be used to attend more burglaries, more cases of domestic abuse, more incidents of antisocial behaviour.

We also recommend improvements in how police forces make best use of good practice and of science and technology, now and in the future. We found that forces have more in common than is sometimes argued and that targeted financial incentives to forces will help unlock productivity improvements.

Working with a small number of forces, we have developed a model process tool which will enable police forces to deliver improved outcomes for the public. We recommend rolling this out to all forces in England and Wales in the next 18 months. The insight this tool delivers will improve the service police forces offer, as well as strengthening future service models. Officers and staff must have the confidence to do the right thing and to do it well.

Finally, improving productivity needs to be more ingrained in policing culture. We make several recommendations, including a big push on data and evaluation and a bespoke policing productivity function to drive improvement. It will be important to build on the momentum created by early productivity gains.

When taken together, all the recommendations in this review have the potential to free-up about 38 million hours of police time over the coming 5 years – this will of course require considerable effort from policing and from its partners. This is the equivalent of another police officer uplift.

Thank you to all who have engaged with the review – partners in forces across the country, the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and the College of Policing, the National Police Chiefs Council, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Home Office, and, of course, my team. The engagement and energy have been vital to the progress we have made so far; we need this positive drive to continue.

At a crucial juncture for policing, seizing productivity gains will improve outcomes for the public and improve trust and confidence in policing. Nothing can be more important.

Alan Pughsley QPM

Productivity in policing

Why policing productivity matters

Policing must demonstrate the public benefits of the substantial investments it has received

This Review was established to ‘identify ways in which forces across England and Wales can be more productive, improving outcomes’^{[footnote 1]}. In the three financial years to March 2023, Government funded the recruitment of an additional 20,000 police officers. This – together with additional resources provided by precept - is a considerable investment into policing. As new recruits build up experience and capabilities, we would expect to see its impact in terms of public safety.

Compared to 2007, officer numbers have increased seven per cent whilst the population has increased by about 12 per cent (and with it, demand). However, like-for-like comparisons are not necessarily helpful: technology for example should have made police forces more productive since then. But to a large extent we have found that if the uplift has helped fill the most urgent capacity gaps (and improve performance), it has not taken away the need to prioritise and task resources effectively. A productivity drive is as necessary now as it was in the years of officer reduction.

An environment of budget pressures suggests difficult choices ahead for public sector investment. Public agencies will need to evidence, more than ever, that they are providing value for money and becoming more productive.

Pouring additional resources into a service might create more outputs but it does not per se increase productivity if these resources are not used wisely. Neither do officer numbers guarantee reduced crime^{[footnote 2]}. Effective resource allocation is essential to deliver the greatest gains. Coordinated planning and multi-agency collaboration are vital to maximise the chances of better public outcomes. In this context, as a pre- requisite to further investment demands and to strengthening public legitimacy, it is imperative that the policing sector is able to demonstrate how it is making best use of its resources and what direct benefits its activity delivers to the public.

The operating landscape of policing is shifting

Policing demand has changed. Since the mid-1990s, there have been long-term falls in overall crime levels but since 2014, offences have risen again (while still 20 per cent below their 2002/03 level). New technologies have created new criminal opportunities: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports 3.8 million fraud offences^{[footnote 3]} and cyber-enabled, or cyber-dependent crimes, and even across “traditional” crimes, the Metropolitan Police Service assesses that two fifths of robberies and 70 per cent of theft are for mobile phones.

Technological advances can also give rise to investigative opportunities, and policing productivity (and its perceived effectiveness in using technology) can act as a deterrent to criminality.

Some patterns of crime are less easy to read. Violent offences recorded by police increased, but the Crime Survey for England and Wales suggests a decrease. Recorded sexual offences have markedly increased. More victims are finding the courage to come forward and report crimes such as rape, domestic abuse and the sexual exploitation of children. The recognition of vulnerability in victimisation has become a powerful element shaping policing since the death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter in 2007.

Because of these changes, policing today requires a very different skillset. In 2003, armed with a knowledge of three crime types (burglary, theft and criminal damage), a constable knew how to approach 80 per cent of the demand coming their way. In 2023, in order to manage the same proportion of their work, this constable has to be competent across six disparate and wider categories of crime: theft, fraud (including online), violence with injury, stalking and harassment, public order and violence without injury. Non crime demand on officers equally broadened in scope during that time.

The policing mission is broad, and in some respects, forces have experienced “mission creep” in the last decade as the reach of a number of other public services has reduced, in a context of tighter resources and rising demand. In this, our findings echo the Chief Inspector of Constabulary’s recent State of Policing report^{[footnote 5]}. Today the police role encompasses three interconnected spheres:

• work that only the police can do because it requires the exercise of their unique powers. This includes maintaining the peace on the streets.

• work undertaken by the police to meet their obligations within the criminal justice service (i.e., seeking justice outcomes).

• work in multi-agency partnerships that seek to solve societal, community-based problems (crime and non-crime demand) or address specific offender management issues.

The last category is where it is easiest for the police to step-in to fill a service provision gap left by partners. This is not a new issue: a Home Office (1995) Review of Police Core and Ancillary Tasks, attempted to identify superfluous core and ancillary tasks that could be shed or moved to other agencies . Many changes subsequently took place – but other areas of mission creep have since arisen (as detailed for example in the mental ill-health section).^{[footnote 6]}

Against this shifting landscape, the productivity question moves from a general one (are police productive?) to more specific lines of enquiries: are police productive in their response to areas of rising demand, such as domestic abuse or fraud? How are they developing the right capabilities to match their operating needs? Are policing resources being used productively in the criminal justice, social or emergency arena?

Figure 1: breakdown of crime types. Source: ONS ^{[footnote 4]}

Crime type	2002/03	2022/23
Theft	50%	25%
Criminal damage	16%	8%
Burglary	13%	13%
Violence with injury	5%	12%
Violence without injury	4%	8%
Fraud	3%	17%
Public order	2%	9%
Drugs	2%	2%
Robbery	2%	2%
Weapons possession	1%	1%
Sexual	1%	3%
Stalking and harrassment	0%	10%

Public consent and trust are drivers of productivity - and a productive police service feeds trust and confidence

Societal and public expectations are evolving. More people expect choice, accessibility and convenience in the service delivery they receive from public sector organisations. But even as technologies evolve and the policing environment changes, some core public expectations remain constant: police visibility, neighbourhood presence, criminal justice effectiveness, and the ability to trust.

Levels of trust and confidence in the police in England and Wales have dropped in recent years. One driver of this decline is the gravity and number of criminal acts perpetrated by serving officers, and more widely the issues with culture and behaviour highlighted by a number of reviews, most notably Baroness Casey’s Review into the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service^{[footnote 7]}. HMICFRS’ Chief Inspector of Constabulary talks about “a limited window of opportunity to repair public trust”.

In this context, one could query whether productivity should be a priority at all. However, productivity and trust are closely interlinked. Three elements can, to various degrees, drive the public’s perceptions of their police:

• Values (including fairness and perceptions of fairness, and issues of police integrity).

• Reliability (for example through the police interactions with the public, clarity of expectations and follow-up with victims).

• Capability (through perceptions of police effectiveness and competence)

Forces delivered substantial efficiencies through the 2010s as funding, and officer numbers, decreased. However, improving productivity is different from identifying savings: reducing inputs to reduce costs can lead to a poorer service, declining outputs and lower productivity.

For example, neighbourhood policing was the area which suffered most from the decline in officer numbers. Yet, neighbourhood policing cultivates community consent, fostering trust and legitimacy in policing; it provides officers with contextual understanding for the judicious use of their powers; perceptions of a local police commitment to civic engagement are strongly associated with higher confidence in the police; in reverse, perceptions of antisocial behaviour and disorder (where neighbourhood police have a key role) are correlated with low confidence in the police^{[footnote 8]}.

Low legitimacy and low levels of trust, in return, impact police effectiveness. For example, it creates situations where officers ‘have to be persuasive just to get basic information such as statements and other evidence’^{[footnote 9]}. It decreases the attractiveness of forces to get the best candidates on the job market. A lack of legitimacy also means officers on the street have to work harder and longer to get results, becoming less productive.

The Casey Review highlighted that “policing should start with engagement, rather than simply end with the passive public endorsement of plans or initiatives”. This is also key to driving up productivity in the sector. Reconnecting with the public will provide better knowledge of what users expect, need or what they do not care for (which could inform prioritisation of what the service should deliver^{[footnote 10]}). It provides a platform to educate the public on the policing choices that must be made within existing resources. Many forces – supported by their Police and Crime Commissioners - are currently working to strengthen their dialogue with communities (Greater Manchester Police, Metropolitan Police Service, Lincolnshire Police and others) – if this feeds into the decision-making processes, it will help them maximise public value by improving outcomes for citizens. It can re-ignite a virtuous circle between productivity and trust^{[footnote 11]}.

Figure 2: links between trust in policing and productivity

Higher levels of trust and satisfaction:

• Operations: more public participating in prevention; eyewitness accounts and victim statements are a critical factor determining the likelihood of solving a crime; more volunteers helping solve local problems.
• Officers: improved interactions with the public; increased compliance.
• HR: more applicants, increased diversity of applicants, wider pool to choose from.
• Finance: better targeting of resources, improved understanding of impact, clear focus on what makes a difference to people.
• Strategy: clearer articulation of decisions and expected public impact; improved transparency, performance, accountability and culture; stronger funding case

Leads to a more productive police sector:

• More productivity frees up officer time hence more cases dealt with, more neighbourhood presence, better timeliness in attending scenes.
• The police service offer is able to better match public expectations.
• Better outcomes for victims.
• Increased perception of reliability.
• Reduction in fear of crime and increase in feeling of safety.
• A force more effective at dealing with crime and more likely to be seen as fair.

Leading to higher levels of trust and satisfaction.

What we mean by policing productivity

Productivity in a public sector context

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an authoritative international source on methodology for productivity analysis defines productivity as ‘a ratio between the output volume and the volume of inputs. In other words, it measures how efficiently inputs, such as labour and capital are being used … to produce a given level of output’^{[footnote 12]}.

In a public sector context, the concept is more complex because outputs (what is directly provided by the public organisation) are ‘non-market’ outputs, most often provided free of charge. The value of these services to the public (outside a market’s pricing mechanism) is divorced from the cost of their provision and their quality standard.

Public sector productivity can perhaps be better understood as the combination of efficiency and effectiveness: how good a public organisation (or sector) is at delivering the public outcomes it was set up to deliver, making the best use of its available resources. A focus is on improving productivity then means:

• Delivering the same quantity and quality of service outputs, but at a reduced cost, or

• Improving the delivery of service outputs (in quality or quantity) for the same cost^{[footnote 13]}

The challenges to measuring productivity in policing

As is often the case in policing, the Peelian principles^{[footnote 14]} are an initial reference point. Robert Peel’s statement that the “test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder” provides an idea of the public outcome sought, but little practical help in terms of productivity measurement (in common with much of the prevention area, where assessing what might have happened if no activity had been undertaken is a fiendish exercise).

The absence of crime and disorder objective arguably sets a laudable but unrealistic framework given that the drivers of crime are mostly outside police controls (a parallel in the health sector might be to set the absence of illnesses as a measure for the NHS). Areas like prevention also require a whole-system approach complementing policing activity.

In practical terms, one can point to areas of policing success. Burglary is at an historic low and many serious crime types remain below pre-pandemic levels; the sector has again and again, shown its effectiveness in dealing with a wide array of major events (from the pandemic to public disorder and terrorism threats), supporting the UK’s attractiveness as a place to live, work and invest. Many forces have been successful in reducing their running costs and delivering substantial efficiency savings in the past ten years.

Yet in other areas police effectiveness and efficiency is either not where it should be, or evidencing it suffers from a lack of data and evaluation^{[footnote 15]}.

Two specific challenges to making an assessment of policing productivity relate to the “multi-output” and “multi-outcome” nature of police activity, and to the shifting priorities they are subject to in strategic and operational terms^{[footnote 16]}.

Proxies to measure policing productivity have been used, whether in academic studies, government policy or in the media. Often based on an output method, measures typically include those with a more direct links to police activity^{[footnote 17]}: number of arrests, rate of crimes solved, average response time to calls for service. Each approach has limitations and only provides a partial picture.

With a wide-ranging set of responsibilities and a society that expects so many things from its police service, set measures of policing productivity risk favouring certain policing activities over others that are less measurable, but just as essential^{[footnote 18]}. External factors also impact police performance, whether it is officers responding to non-crime demand (unwarranted police involvement), “picking up the slack” to make up for pressures on other public services (such as in the mental health area), or whether backlogs further down in the criminal justice process are slowing down new cases leading to higher “victim attrition”. Policing productivity needs to be looked at in the context of the effectiveness of its partners, and of its partnerships.

Finally, there needs to be a recognition of the different ways in which an output can be delivered – for example in terms of the quality of the service experienced by the public. A factory churning out a high number of faulty products would not be productive – and so it would be for police investigations or case files.

For those reasons, it has been important to the Review team to use a combination of approaches to provide a fuller picture of policing’s effectiveness and efficiency. For the policing sector, the challenge is two-fold:

• How does it know it is productive with its current and new resources, and is it able to articulate clearly, through data, the public benefits that stem directly from its activities?
• How, on an ongoing basis and in the long term, can it improve its productivity further, for example to deliver the 0.5 per cent annual productivity growth sought by the Chancellor^{[footnote 19]}

The police mission

Whilst policing inputs (such as police officer numbers) are easy to count, measuring productivity requires consensus as to what the desired outputs from policing are, in practice that means a common understanding on what the police are here to do.

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) sets out six “policing missions” in its 2030 Vision^{[footnote 20]} which chief constables agree resources and activities should be deployed to: “To keep our communities safe; To prevent crime and criminality; To effectively respond to all types of demand; To develop and inspire our workforce and transform our culture; To strengthen and advance our partnerships to prevent crime and deliver justice for victims; And to embed a culture of continuous improvement and innovation in policing”. Productivity would then refer to the efficiency and effectiveness with which police forces carry out these duties and responsibilities. However, the breadth of these missions only further highlights the challenge of setting a clear productivity measure – as well as the need for policing to be more precise on its objectives to enable success and productivity to be effectively measured.

In practice the police are under a duty to provide free, comprehensive, universal services, often in pressing situations. To a large extent, it responds to a “live” urgent demand beyond its direct control. In that context, the service’s task is to respond to community needs effectively, to maximise outcomes for the public and for victims. To do this, forces grade calls from the public as to priority, recording and allocating crimes with viable lines of enquiry for investigation.

With constrained resources, what policing should prioritise is always a thorny question. Police and Crime Commissioners and government, with their democratic accountability, provide some strategic objectives and priorities.

Consideration of harm, threat and risk is a complementary approach. In crime statistics offences are all equivalent numbers, but homicide is far more harmful than shoplifting – and naturally more resources should be allocated to prevent and investigate the more harmful crimes. Harm measurements (such as the Cambridge Crime Harm Index or the ONS Crime Severity Score) can be a tool for prioritisation – and to an extent a proxy to show the recent increases in the “complexity” of crime^{[footnote 21]}, against a decrease in actual volume.

Policing productivity is perhaps better assessed by how (and whether) the duties and responsibilities of the police are shaped into clear aims and objectives; what inputs (resources) go into meeting these objectives; what outputs are created from these resources (including the quality standard) and what tangible benefits (outcomes) arise for the public. The Review therefore focussed on what could make a difference to the public, rather than settling for an index of productivity for policing. This has guided our multistrand approach.

Improving policing productivity

Looking back

Notable historic reviews touching upon policing productivity (and the closely related themes of efficiency and effectiveness) have included the Operational Policing Review (1990)^{[footnote 22]}, Making a Difference: Reducing Bureaucracy and Red Tape in the Criminal Justice System (2003)^{[footnote 23]}, and the Independent Review of Policing by Sir Ronnie Flanagan (2008)^{[footnote 24]}.

Issues have lingered. For example, many of the findings of the extensive 1990 Operational Policing Review feel contemporary:

• It noted pressures on police demand: “a very significant proportion of all manpower and financial increases achieved… have been absorbed by new procedures, new legislation…”. “Changes in mental health provision have resulted in (higher demand for policing)… These calls are frequently extremely demanding in terms of police time”.
• Issues of mission clarity and data consistency. There is a “desperate need for the service to be clear as to the critical indicators or success and to standardise measurement of common activities across all forces”. It recommended that “data methodology should be standardised nationally to allow reliable comparisons”.
• The drive for short-term efficiencies has come at the cost of effectiveness (less measurable work such as prevention, reassurance/patrols and “customer service” side of things) creating negative longer- term effects in the quality of service and public satisfaction.
• Barriers to long-term innovation: “The proportion (of funding) that is committed to capital projects and other major equipment programmes is far too low when compared to other sectors of public service and industry. It is virtually impossible for chief police officers to plan ahead and to make provision for long- term projects”.
• Sector inconsistency across technology. “The lack of a national information technology strategy has led in many cases to piecemeal and sporadic development … which have led to an incompatibility between many systems and methods. The overall effect of this lack of coordination and strategic development has been the failure to grasp many of the opportunities that have been presented by the growth in information handling and use”. The 1990 police-led review suggested that central mandation should be introduced: “Following evaluation of IT systems, standard minimum specifications should be set”. “Mandatory IT standards should be introduced throughout all police forces”, and “police IT research and development should be centrally directed to ensure interoperability where appropriate and quality control”. At the same time, they were hopeful about “the technological forecasts … that police, magistrates courts, crown courts, prisons and probation services (will soon) work on linked systems”.
• The review also noted that training commitments had increased, increasing abstraction, and that training effectiveness could be difficult to assess against real-life demands.

These findings still echo in the pages of this report through our own findings and analysis. The imperative to change the narrative dictates two actions:

• Firstly, the practical, hands-on approach that we have taken in this Review. We have aimed to use our findings to create momentum and work with the Home Office and forces to enact change there and then. By building a Model Process tool with six forces, the Review has aimed to show – not just tell – what can be achieved. With support from the Policing Minister, the Review has already freed up police officer time by unblocking barriers to productivity across mental ill-health demand and in crime reporting.

• Secondly, politicians and sector leaders need to use this Review’s recommendations more effectively than their predecessors did of previous reviews in the 1990s. In the current context of economics, public trust and the technological pace of change, inaction, muddling through or making incremental tweaks carries far more risk to police legitimacy and productivity than can be afforded. The focus on action must continue beyond this report.

Our practical approach

Change in policing frequently stems from failure – and the subsequent inquiries, inspections or commissions. This Review wants change in policing to be also inspired by success: what works, what benefits the public, and makes a positive difference.

The Review has looked at organisational and individual productivity: assessing where the sector makes best use of its assets, and whether individuals are used as effectively as can be in terms of their capabilities. We have concerned ourselves with identifying practical, implementable ways in which policing can be more efficient and effective, improving public benefits – in both quantity and quality. We have identified operational and structural barriers. We have also sought to robustly evaluate the productivity impact of innovations and approaches that some forces have adopted, and where wider adoption would benefit all forces.

We have sought to take the policing sector and its leaders with us, building consensus on the issues and challenges, bringing in their participation across all strands of study, and in implementing the identified improvements.

The Review, with the support of the policing minister, has created momentum in identifying areas of activity that may not be a productive use of police officer time – helping free up additional capacity. The section on barriers in policing reviews three example areas: mental ill-health demand, Home Office crime recording rules, and criminal justice processes.

The Review has used various methodologies to assess policing productivity. It has developed a process-based approach (outputs by activity) to assess impact against resourcing for a number of offences and processes (burglary, domestic abuse including coercive and controlling behaviour, violence with injury, adult rape and serious sexual offences, antisocial behaviour, responding to the public). A tool developed with six police forces (Cumbria Constabulary, Durham Constabulary, South Wales Police, Thames Valley Police, West Midlands Police, West Yorkshire Police) and complemented by data from the Home Office’s Police Activity Survey (PAS) provides senior leaders with an insight into the productivity levers they can use to improve processes and deliver better quality outcomes. The tool sets out the steps in each process, the performance in relation to the cost, and potential actions other forces use to improve their own productivity and effectiveness.

We have examined where forces have added capacity or created new specialist capabilities (police officer uplift or precept increases), and what outputs (reports, detection, arrests…) are being delivered by the addition of these resources. This aims to strengthen the articulation between police investment and public outcomes.

Working with the Vice Chair of the NPCC and chief constable of South Wales, and National Policing Chief Scientific Adviser, we have identified how the systemic use of innovation and technology can be improved across 43 forces. Technology is an asset whose exploitation by policing has been necessary but patchy. We looked at the potential for greater national consistency and risk appetite - where technological investment are not simply about replacing legacy systems, but about innovations to improve productivity in areas such as investigations.

Finally, policing needs to develop a culture focused on approaches that demonstrate their effectiveness, driven by delivering best outcomes to the public and value for money. The Health and Education models should be applied to policing to lever better evidence sharing and encourage robust innovation. The Review developed the idea and a proof of concept for a Police Endowment Fund.

Within the twelve months of the Review and with a lean team, we could not tackle all the inefficiencies that have accumulated over, sometimes, decades. The Review team has prioritised the areas where short term impact can be achieved, and put in the foundation blocks to a more effective system in the longer term.

With limited time, the Review has largely focused on areas where some of the biggest potential productivity gains were within grasp. Other opportunities for productivity gains have been identified. Among them, and prioritised for further exploration in the next phase of work are a review of police custody; the police response to, and involvement with, missing person incidents; officers on restricted duties; and the potential of artificial intelligence.

Policing productivity: a duty for forces and partners

Systemic constraints exist in policing which are not conducive to productivity. These include budget constraints, frequent policy interventions and short-term policy focus, external bodies’ guidance and recommendations. If maximising productivity depends on being able to use the most appropriate resource for the job, in many instances, police forces are too financially constrained to do so. Set officer numbers, savings requirements and lack of capital funding and long-term revenue visibility can mean that officers end up in back-office functions or that technology investment is neglected in favour of labour-intensive processes.

Many of the productivity levers that would be available to a CEO are out of reach for chief constables: short and long-term priorities, delivery and training standards, demand resourcing ratio, even dismissals, are often set by other players in the wider policing sector. Internally, regular turnover in senior officers’ areas of responsibilities can lead to a patchy follow-through with critical initiatives already underway whether in terms of sustainability, consistency or upscaling. Yet there is much to be gained if a wider ownership of productivity is taken on at all levels, internally and externally:

• Police forces need to create an innovative culture across their workforce. Bedfordshire Police for example is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), to promote workforce participation in identifying areas of activity that could be improved. Using AWS’ methodology of “working backwards” (starting by picturing the public service offer), the force is encouraging submissions of proposals ready to be presented to an expert panel.
• Forces need to measure, understand and articulate the links between their activities and the public benefits these deliver. This means clearer objectives, better, comparable data, and stronger evaluations.
• Finally forces, supported at the national level, need to look beyond what is urgent today, and plan against the needs of tomorrow. They need to work together to scope technological opportunities, develop workforce capabilities and prioritise resourcing strategically.
• The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 requires Police and Crime Commissioners to “secure an efficient and effective police for their area”, so they have a leading role in promoting productivity – and making it a focus of the oversight.

Every year, hundreds of new recommendations, guidelines and changes in standard or processes are put forward to forces by external partners. For example, in September 2023 on HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) recommendation portal, each individual police force had on average four current causes of concern, 101 live recommendations, 28 pending areas for improvement (stemming from more than 80 inspections on average). These address failings or areas for improvement – and aim to minimise risk. Taken collectively however, they create considerable resourcing demand to implement and to deliver on a sustainable basis. Yet it is not always clear whether the resourcing demand has been considered to ensure that it is commensurate with the expected public benefits.

From the outset of the Review, and in our visits to forces, Chief Officers raised a number of areas outside their direct control that were preventing their force from being as productive as possible and hindering the deployment of their officers. Whilst it was felt that these might create a substantial drag on resources, there was very little data to confirm their perception and estimate the scale of that impact.

The Review looked into three areas raised by forces recurringly: unwarranted police response to mental ill-health incidents, crime recording rules, and precharge files. The review has demonstrated such external barriers can be addressed if:

• the demand can be accurately assessed to generate a meaningful national picture,

• an evidence base is created to build the appropriate support for change, and

• the policing sector works with partners to implement pragmatic solutions.

The barriers studied in this chapter have external drivers, but whilst partnership working is essential to bring about their fundamental resolution, in each case we have also found clear opportunities for forces to complement this with internal processes or delivery improvements.

Recommendation

Organisations that review or inspect policing – including HMICFRS, the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the College of Policing - should have a duty to assess the investment implications of their guidance or recommendations. The two major considerations should be: (i) whether effectiveness has been demonstrated, and (ii) whether the required resourcing is a commensurate and cost-efficient way of delivering the expected benefits (Recommendation 4).

Barriers to productivity

Mental ill health demand

Police has a legitimate role dealing with individuals who are suffering mental ill-health (for example victims or perpetrators of crime, or those who pose an immediate and serious risk to themselves or others), but officers find themselves intervening in broader situations, where other public services have the expertise and ought to take the lead.

Police activity outside of its core mission leads to three key negative outcomes:

1. Individuals such as mental ill health patients do not receive the timely and appropriate professional response they need.
2. This demand is not visible to partner agencies, preventing them from making the investments or changes required to deal with that demand (or bid for funding to improve services).
3. Police resources become tied up dealing with things they should not be doing (unwarranted effort or demand) having a negative impact on policing productivity and public confidence. The mission creep becomes entrenched – with further recommendations from inspection or accountability bodies.

The review worked with all 43 police forces in England and Wales on a snapshot of 24 hours of mental ill health related demand in October 2022. Several police forces also conducted deep dives on their available data to understand the different forms of demand and a second snapshot with six police forces took place in January 2023. Our findings are captured in our Mental Health Demand on Policing report^{[footnote 25]}.

In 2021/22, police forces recorded over 600,000 incidents linked to mental ill health, indicating that policing could be spending 2.2 million hours annually dealing with mental health related incidents^{[footnote 26]}.

While some incidents involving mental ill-health do require police attendance, 45 per cent involved no immediate threat of serious injury, nor any crime. In our second report, we demonstrated police could be spending almost 1.6 million hours at incidents of a “non-crime no immediate threat” nature where arguably other public services should take the lead^{[footnote 27]}. For many of these, the deployment of officers, rather than specialist health support, is not a valid use of police resources. The review also identified instances where forces or their Police and Crime Commissioner were paying for elements of provision that should be funded through the NHS long term plan.

Data capture by police forces can underplay the mental ill-health element of police demand. Our first snapshot identified that 5.8 per cent of incidents recorded by police were related to mental ill-health, with large variations across forces. The second snapshot - with six police forces in January 2023 – recorded an average of 8.9 per cent of incidents related to mental illhealth^{[footnote 28]}. Data quality work undertaken before and during the second snapshot helped forces better identify mental ill-health demand and has increased consistency of reporting across the sample.

Key causes of “unwarranted” demand

Section 136 dwell times: Police officers have the power under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act to detain individuals they encounter in public who are experiencing a mental health crisis and need immediate care. Once detained, the individual should be conveyed to a specialist health-based place of safety for assessment by professionals. Police officers are spending unacceptable amounts of time safeguarding these patients, usually in hospital Emergency Departments while they await an assessment. While police involvement at the point of detention might be warranted, the use of police resources to safeguard the patient awaiting an assessment clearly is not. The review identified police officers spend an estimated 800,000 hours annually waiting with mental health patients. This is time they could use more effectively attending 400,000 domestic abuse incidents, 1.3 million antisocial behaviour reports or 500,000 burglary reports.

Detention in custody suites: Individuals who have been arrested and taken to police custody suites may be assessed by mental health professionals. If they decide the individual needs to be detained for further treatment, they will seek to identify a suitable bed. Police forces report that patients are being regularly held, for their own safety, in custody suites without any legal framework until those beds can be found (as many as 3,000 people a year). Police forces take inconsistent approaches to address these situations.

Missing from NHS institutions: Every year, about 25,000 individuals are reported to the police as missing from mental health settings and hospitals. A report on missing episodes from healthcare settings in 2020 reported that in 37 per cent of cases reviewed, it had been “inappropriate” to make a missing report to police and the incident should have been resolved by the relevant agency^{[footnote 29]}. This is worth further analysis (see recommendation x).

Towards a more productive partnership with other agencies

Policing needs to be clearer with the public and partners where it will, and will not, accept responsibility from other agencies. Where another agency already has an established duty of care, police involvement should be limited to:

• when there is a real and immediate risk of death or serious injury, or

• crime has occurred or is occurring, and there is a requirement to secure evidence, or

• there is a requirement for policing powers.

Some police forces had already worked with partners to address the issues above. Two examples were highlighted in our previous report.

The “Multi-agency response for adults missing from health and care settings: A national framework for England^{[footnote 30]}” encourages partners to carry out relevant actions such as telephone enquiries and searches of the immediate area, and to only report patients missing to the police if there is a critical concern for their safety, they are detained under the Mental Health Act, or they have failed to return home and there is concern they will not return or suffer serious harm. West Yorkshire Police is in the process of implementing this framework with partners.

Right care, right person

In 2018/19 Humberside Police received 14,000 calls for service in relation to mental ill health, a rise of 35 per cent in two years. This accounted for six per cent of all its demand. Dealing with these calls severely hampered the force’s ability to respond to other calls for service. This led the force to create a multi-agency partnership ‘task & finish’ group with senior representatives from local authorities, mental health service providers, hospitals, Commissioning Groups and Ambulance Trusts. New processes set out clearly when the police involvement in health and welfare incidents was inappropriate and could be better dealt with by another partner agency.

Key to success was collaboration with partners to help them understand what demand might be re-directed, and help them implement appropriate policies, structures, and resources. Legal advice was also sought. The robust position revealed unresourced demand, which also enabled partners to seek investment into areas that required it.

The proportion of non-crime mental health incidents to which police deployed to fell 16 per cent, an average of more than 500 fewer deployments per month, saving in excess of 1,100 officer hours per month.

Progress on mental health demand on policing report recommendations

In November 2022, the Policing Productivity Review made eight recommendations in its Mental Health Demand on Policing report.

The first recommendation (to implement the Right Care Right Person model) is now being implemented in every Home Office police force. In July 2023, NHS England, the police and government signed up to the National Partnership Agreement: Right Care, Right Person. This sets the parameters for a police response to a mental health-related incident: to investigate a crime that has occurred or is occurring; or to protect people when there is a real and immediate risk of death or serious harm. It also requires local partners in England to work towards taking responsibility for individuals detained by police under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act, within one hour of that person arriving at the appropriate facility^{[footnote 31]}. Partners in Wales are also working through implementation.

Our recommendation to implement the national framework for missing adults will be incorporated into the Right Care, Right Person approach. The framework places responsibility on care providers to prevent missing episodes and take action to locate individuals prior to contacting the police.

Our recommendations on improvements to the quality of police recording and reporting on mental ill health demand have been incorporated in the NPCC Mental Health & Policing Strategy published in December 2022. They are being implemented through the roll out of Right Care Right Person. This will help policing and healthcare services better understand the nature of mental ill health demand.

We also made recommendations for dedicated healthcare staff to attend mental health incidents and provide dedicated telephone support. Health care trusts are expanding the provision of mental health transport vehicles, mental health nurses in ambulance control rooms.

Other recommendations to review Section 136 legislation and address gaps linked to patients being detained in custody are still being considered across relevant NPCC portfolio areas.

Recommendations

The Review made a number of recommendations in November 2022 and February 2023 to improve productivity in how the public sector manages mental ill-health demand. The resulting national partnership agreement – including Right Care Right Person – is a significant achievement which should enable improvements.

To ensure continued progress, the Policing Productivity Review team and the national police lead for mental health should report to ministers twice a year on implementation against the recommendations made in February 2023. The first of these reports should be submitted by 31 December 2023 (Recommendation 5).

Home Office counting rules

The Home Office counting rules were established in 1998 and have been amended several times over recent years in response to concerns that police forces were under-recording crime. HMICFRS has encouraged forces to adopt early crime recording practices often summarised as a move towards “crime to investigate”’ rather than “investigating to crime”. Working with the Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary (NPCC lead in this area), the Review has addressed three barriers to productivity raised by police forces:

• The counting rules have become confusing and bureaucratic, requiring significant resources to manage and check.

• Police officers and staff have found themselves recording or unable to cancel crimes they knew had not happened.
• The volume of duplicate crime records confuses victims and investigators, preventing them from focussing on the principal crimes that needed to be investigated and the highest risks that needed to be prevented.

In early 2023, the NPCC lead consulted with all police forces to identify simplification opportunities that would make a material difference in reducing bureaucracy while maintaining a clear victim focus and ensuring that the service the victim receives would not be diminished. The review supplemented this work with illustrative data from two police forces (Hertfordshire Constabulary and Kent Police).

The Review reported in May 2023 that the Home Office counting rules had led to police forces “double recording” some crimes and inappropriately recording others. This had resulted in significant time and effort being spent by police forces recording crimes unnecessarily. It made four recommendations for changes to the rules which were accepted and implemented in May 2023. The full findings are set out in the Review’s Home Office Counting Rules report^{[footnote 32]}. The key changes were:

1. Changes to the crime cancellation rules to redress the current imbalance. Police forces to take a proportionate approach and give authority to Force Crime Registrars to make final decisions on what crimes should be cancelled.
2. Removal of double counting of behavioural crimes. Restore a version of the principal crime rule so police forces are recording the most impactive crime such as harassment, stalking offences and controlling/coercive behaviour.
3. Changes to the ways malicious communication offences are recorded. Now requires police to consider whether the communication may be an expression which would be considered to be freedom of speech, and allows for recording and investigation in more serious cases where the principal crime rule does not apply.
4. De-notification of the offence of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986

The implementation of these recommendations (and the double-counting in particular) is expected to lead to the reduction of as much as four per cent (236,000) of crime reports per year, improving the accuracy of crime recording and the service to victims. It will save as many as 433,000 officer hours that can be redeployed from unnecessary recording tasks, to dealing with offences or attending incidents (the equivalent of the initial attendance at 220,000 domestic abuse incidents, 270,000 burglaries, or almost 740,000 antisocial behaviour incidents).

Home Office counting rules phase 2

The Policing Productivity Review team continue to work closely with the NPCC lead to identify further opportunities to reduce bureaucracy. Submissions will be made in autumn 2023 with the expectation that implementation should follow swiftly, prior to the end of 2023/24. Phase 2 will focus on the detailed work of other NPCC portfolio leads namely:

• Reducing bureaucracy linked to outcome recording.

• Ensuring Op Soteria^{[footnote 33]} is embedded into the new outcomes framework.

• Changing the status of offender, where it’s a child, in cases of “non-aggravated requests for indecent images” from suspect to person of interest.

• Implementing a process which will ensure all unexpected and non-suspicious deaths are recorded.

• Updating the Home Office counting rules to ensure it reflects the requirements of modern slavery incident recording.
• Reviewing the notifiable offence list.

Review of the National Standards of Incident Recording

The Policing Productivity Review Team has instigated a review of the National Standards of Incident Recording. These standards were introduced in 2011 to ensure common recording practices across policing. Nevertheless, police forces interpret or implement them differently. For example, some police forces resolve up to 60 per cent of their calls without recording an incident or contact log, whilst at least nine forces report that they create a record for every call. In addition, the National Standards of Incident Recording do not help in the context of online contact.

It is estimated that annually there might be about 40 million calls for service to the police through 999 and 101 telephone numbers^{[footnote 34]}. Call takers spend an average of 14 minutes recording and risk assessing an incident on a command-and-control system^{[footnote 35]}. One force (which records all contacts) recorded almost 1.7 million incidents and contacts in 2022/23. If the new standards allow that force to resolve 60 per cent of their calls without creating a record, this has the potential to save them as many as 200,000 hours a year^{[footnote 36]}.

The review will focus on areas where the National Standards of Incident Recording does not provide clear standards (that are understood by all forces in the same way), to bring out clarity and effectiveness in processes:

• Changes in the way police contact centres operate including use of digital contact methods and first contact resolution.

• Use of risk assessment processes (THRIVE^{[footnote 37]} and RETHRIVE)

• Improvements to recording of antisocial behaviour, missing person and transport incidents (including pursuits)

• Embedding Right Care Right Person, the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and Operation Soteria into recording practices

• Incident closing processes

Recommendations will be submitted to the NPCC in the autumn and to the College of Policing, once agreed, for immediate implementation. An annual review of the National Standards of Incident Recording should subsequently take place to ensure they remain up to date and relevant.

Recommendations

Following the work of the Review with NPCC leads, significant changes were made to the Home Office counting rules – the way in which crime is recorded- in April 2023.

To ensure the productivity gains continue, the Policing Productivity team and the national police lead for crime data integrity should report progress to ministers every six months. The first of these reports should be submitted by 31 December 2023.

Proposals for further changes should be brought forward by the national police lead for crime data integrity by October 2023. HMICFRS should ensure their inspection approach reflects the changes. (Recommendation 6)

Pre-charge files

In addition to looking at productivity improvements in the management of mental health demand and Home Office counting rules, the review has also focused on a specific part of the criminal justice process: pre-charge files, i.e., the case material that police send to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for charging consideration.

The average time between the offence and the charge or summons has increased substantially, from 14 days in 2016 to 44 days in 2023^{[footnote 38]}. The NPCC argues that the introduction of Data Protection Act 2018, the Director’s Guidance on Charging and the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure, compounded by the sharp increase in the volume of data and additional responsibilities for public protection and safeguarding, have created significant resourcing requirements to the criminal justice process^{[footnote 39]}. The Review has worked to quantify the scale of this.

Streamlining the pre-charge file requirements

On 31 December 2020, the revised code of practice to the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, the Director’s Guidance on Charging (sixth edition) and the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure came into effect, introducing significant changes to the criminal justice processes, impacting police forces and the CPS. This included:

1. Introduction of the Investigation Management Document, requiring police to complete a 17-part form for almost all pre-charge files to CPS.
2. the requirement to provide and redact all material that falls under the “rebuttable presumption” categories in the pre-charge files to CPS, irrespective of whether the police assesses that material as capable of meeting the test for disclosure.
3. higher disclosure schedule requirements on police for CPS pre-charge files.

These changes “place greater requirements on the police to produce material at an early stage, rather than when the case is already in the court system”^{[footnote 40]}, and dramatically increase the amount of material that police investigators have to process.

To substantiate this, the Review worked with four police forces (Durham Constabulary, Kent Police, Leicestershire Police and Merseyside Police) to quantify the time investigators spend building a non-complex pre-charge file for CPS decision. Sampling from forces showed that between 4.8 and 23 hours^{[footnote 41]} are required for each file, an average of 14 hours (of which about 20 per cent is spent on redaction). There are large variations: even within the same force, a similar spread exists depending on the individual cases and crime types.

Figure 3: average days between offence and charge/summons

For complex cases, the time required to build a file is of course even higher: Kent Police estimated that child abuse casefiles take an average of 112 hours. Across all crime types (complex and non-complex) it takes 63 hours.

Workload has increased in a number of ways:

• A review by Surrey Police found the requirement for investigators to complete the Investigation Management Document has added an average of three hours of work when completing a file^{[footnote 42]}. If we extrapolate this for every pre-charge file sent to CPS, this equates to 540,000 officer hours a year^{[footnote 43]}.

• The requirement to provide everything that falls under the “rebuttable presumption” categories has inflated the volume of material (see next section).

• Under the current requirements, police now have to provide full disclosure schedules for a pre-charge decision. “Put simply, if the police submitted 100 cases to the CPS under the old regime, about 75^{[footnote 44]} would result in a charge and then require the officer to complete a file. Now, all 100 require a file (to be submitted) even though 25 will not ultimately result in a charge. This represents a 33 per cent increase, not only in workload, but in effort ultimately to no avail”^{[footnote 45]}. The Review estimates that in 2022/23 the CPS decided to take no further action in relation to about 38,000 pre-charge files. Using the estimated average of 14 hours for officers to complete a pre-charge file, it means that about 532,000 officer hours were used to build full files that go no further^{[footnote 46]}. This time usage should be minimised.

The requirements of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act code of practice, the Director’s Guidance on Charging (sixth edition) and the Attorney General’s Guidelines have added significant time to the work of the police investigator. Given that much of this material provided to the CPS is never going to be shared with defence, much of that time could not be classified as productive use of officers’ time. The Review recommends that these documents are reviewed to ensure that the criminal justice process (police and CPS) becomes more effective. Options may include:

1. Removing the need for the Investigation Management Document or reducing its need to Crown Court submissions only.

2. Removing the requirement for investigators to send “rebuttable presumption” material to the CPS where this will not meet the Disclosure Test (unless specifically requested by the CPS).
3. Introducing streamlined files for certain pre-charge decisions.

Lightening the redaction burden

The Data Protection Act 2018 requires police forces to redact all unnecessary personal information out of any material they send to CPS for review. A recent NPCC review^{[footnote 47]} of pre-charge files from 2020 (i.e. before the changes) showed on average six items of “unused”^{[footnote 48]} material for each file sent to the CPS. In 2023 files, that number had increased to 16 “unused” items, an average of 129 pages of text and 49 minutes of audio/visual material. Using Thames Valley Police methodology^{[footnote 49]} of two minutes to review/ redact a page and 1.5 times to review the length of audio-visual material, the Review estimates that an average 5.5 hours is required to redact the material for each pre-charge file.

Redaction will always be required for files that progress to court – however police forces will have spent 210,000 hours redacting material for the 38,274 files that do not progress beyond CPS. This is an amount of time that would be much better served attending 100,000 domestic abuse incidents, or 130,000 burglaries. A legislative exemption to the Data Protection Act allowing policing in England and Wales^{[footnote 50]} to share material with the CPS without redacting it, will remove this wasted effort. Redaction would, for the relevant files only, be undertaken by police post-CPS charging decision.

There are also technical solutions to reducing the time spent by forces on redacting the material that needs to be shared with CPS. About 770,000 hours are spent by investigators redacting text material annually^{[footnote 51]}, so even if digital redaction only achieved a 80 per cent saving in time efficiency (as per Bedfordshire Police evaluation), this could free up 618,000 hours of investigators’ time.

Auto redaction

Several police forces, including Avon and Somerset Police, Cleveland Police, Devon and Cornwall Police, Dorset Police, Greater Manchester Police, Merseyside Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, Thames Valley Police and Wiltshire Police have been exploring technical solutions to reduce the amount of time they spend manually reviewing and redacting case file material.

One example is Docdefender tested in Bedfordshire Police. The tool assists the reviewer by automatically highlighting the potential data that might need to be redacted. Time and motion studies have been conducted against the current approach. The data from this concluded that the use of DocDefender offered between 80 and 92 per cent time savings. Examples included the redaction of a phone download (578 pages equivalent) in 20 minutes (previously this have taken a couple of days), and the redaction of a 350,000 cells spreadsheet in thirty minutes (this would previously have taken four hours). Bedfordshire Police also report a decrease in investigator time spent redacting witness statements, with a potential efficiency savings of 18,900 police officer hours per annum.

Police Digital Services have been engaging with other forces exploring “auto redaction” and following a commercial process the aim is to ensure all forces have access to this kind of solution. Work has also begun to scope the requirements and market for audio and visual redaction, with a view to implementing it in 2024.

Improving the timeliness of charging decisions

Timeliness is a crucial factor in the effectiveness of the criminal justice process. “An important driver of victim disengagement is how long it takes to complete an investigation and to charge a suspect… Delays between a crime being reported and a suspect being charged, negatively impact the mental and physical health of victims, witnesses and the accused, who are often vulnerable”^{[footnote 52]}. Delays may compromise the recollection of those required to give evidence^{[footnote 53]} and result in more witnesses and victims withdrawing from the process, leading cases to collapse^{[footnote 54]}. The delays affect confidence in the legal system^{[footnote 55]} and police legitimacy – given the public-facing role of officers in that process^{[footnote 56]}.

As noted, the average time between the offence and the charge or summons has increased substantially. It is not possible to disaggregate the time between offence and when police submit the file – however a high percentage of files sent to CPS do not reach the required standard in the first place^{[footnote 57]}. This lengthens the process, as files go back and forth between CPS and forces. There are wide variations across forces, as illustrated in figure 4 below.

Clearly, police forces must track and improve the timeliness and compliance of their submissions. There is an opportunity to use the Model Process approach to compare different forces’ approaches and resource allocation to identify cost effective ways to achieve this. The Review is therefore recommending that case file timeliness and quality be added to the Model Process tool.

There are also delays on the CPS side. CPS aim to make charging decisions within 28 days but only meet this target 75.5 per cent of the time – and things are getting slower^{[footnote 58]}.

Because both sectors are measured on different performance indicators, there are different drivers at play. Police forces and the CPS need shared performance measures to incentivise the timely processing of files, for example through better use of early advice, where the CPS assist investigators in decision making, reducing the “no further action” outcomes. This whole-system approach would increase productivity on both sides.

The scope for police charging decisions is narrow. NPCC is seeking to identify and pilot some additional charging decisions being transferred from the CPS to high performing police forces (specifically relating to anticipated guilty plea offences being tried in Magistrates’ courts). This could provide an opportunity to relieve demand from the CPS, reduce the demand on police to complete pre-charge files for a CPS decision, and improve the timeliness of charging decisions.

Figure 4: DGA (file quality) compliance across forces at June 2023 (Police digital tracker)

Once charged, there is a significant delay before defendants are dealt with at court. Data from HM Court and Tribunal’s Service showed that by August 2023, there were over 400,000 cases waiting to be heard^{[footnote 59]} and the backlog of cases in the Crown Court was the highest ever recorded (64,015). The median time from offence to completion at magistrates’ is 187 days and for Crown Court it is 398 days)^{[footnote 60]}. To improve outcomes, the capacity gap in the CPS and the courts also needs to be addressed.

Shared performance measures across police, CPS and courts would provide common objectives and reduce the incentive for criminal justice partners to transfer workload to each other and allocate blame.

Recommendations

The Government should carry out an urgent review of guidance and practice on how police submit case files to the CPS, with the specific intention of making processes more time-efficient and productive. Ministers should consider the findings of that review by June 2024 (Recommendation 7).

Information sharing rules currently inhibit productivity in the criminal justice service. Two changes should be made:

• The Government should introduce an exemption to the Data Protection Act by March 2024 to incentivise closer joint working between police and the CPS, including easier sharing of material at early stage for CPS advice (Recommendation 8).

• Police forces must implement technical opportunities to redact material by September 2024; delivery of this must be a top priority for the Police Digital Service and the Policing Productivity Team.

The Home Office and criminal justice partners should align success measures for CPS and policing by March 2024. This should drive a more productive partnership approach to case management of crimes going through the criminal justice service (Recommendation 9).

CPS and NPCC should run a pilot giving some additional charging decisions – where a guilty plea is expected - to high performing police forces (Recommendation 10).

The Policing Productivity team should undertake further work to look at other ‘barriers’ to police productivity. Two important areas of focus are missing persons and how police custody operates. The Productivity Team should report back on this by March 2024 (Recommendation 11).

Future opportunities for productivity gains

There are opportunities to address other barriers to productivity. For example, there were about 60,000 incidents relating to children missing from care in 2021/22^{[footnote 61]} (a large proportion of all missing children incidents) and it is estimated that missing person investigations use the equivalent of 1,500 full time officers per year^{[footnote 62]} in terms of resourcing. This includes unwarranted demand such as officers recovering, caring for, or transporting children because a partner agency has a capability or capacity gap.

Another complex area that should be probed is the management of suspects, for example in police custody. There are many partnerships at play including health, social care, Courts and Tribunals, the Prison Service and criminal defence – and processes may not be as streamlined as they could be.

Policing productivity can be boosted by technological investments and process improvements, but first and foremost, officers and staff are driving the outcomes provided to the public: they are forces’ main asset. A capable, motivated and effective workforce, operating at a high standard is central to productivity.

Over 77 per cent of police force’s expenditure is on staff and officer costs^{[footnote 63]}. As at 31 March 2023, the total workforce^{[footnote 64]} across England and Wales was 233,832 with 147,430 full-time equivalent officers in post. The police officer uplift has provided much needed capacity and been used to manage rising demand and improve performance. There were also 6,841 special constables (headcount) and 7,322 Police Support Volunteers.

If productivity depends on the right resource being used for the right job, then getting the right mix of officers/ staff or specialists/generalists is important. The current targets and funding approach on officer numbers have resulted in some de-civilianisation. Workforce planning and resourcing need to recognise the important role of police staff, whether in a frontline capacity in roles that do not need warranted powers, and in roles that demand specific skills outside the police officer curriculum. There is appetite for future investment to be more focussed on proactive and preventative work to reduce demand, and to strengthen specialist skills such as forensics and digital investigation. As criminality becomes more sophisticated and technology advances, policing must improve digital and data literacy skills across its workforce.

We have not sought to undertake a root and branch review of all workforce aspects. Instead, the Review surveyed all police forces and identified some key areas where productivity could be improved. It also explored how sickness, training abstractions and limited duties are impacting on policing productivity.

Workforce

Strategic deployment of the workforce assets

Police officer numbers dropped from about 143,000 to 122,000 between 2010 and 2018 (-15 per cent), while staff numbers decreased even more sharply. During that time, allocation of resources was broadly made on the principles of preserving the frontline, developing “omnicompetence” of officers to make-up for the loss of specialist units, as well as moving resources to address inspection findings, in effect addressing urgent problems by shifting risks from one area to another. “Managing demand” became about reducing demand to more manageable volumes (triage, de-prioritisation), often at the expense of service quality (customer service, positive judicial outcomes).

Over the last three years, with the uplift (frequently supplemented by funding from local precept) creating a larger police workforce, forces have been able to increase capacity (full-time equivalent posts) in the design of some commands and to create new units without having to make a corresponding reduction elsewhere. Through a data request to every force, and insight from all chief constables, the Review sought to understand how and where forces have strategically chosen to deploy additional capacity, what value these investments are delivering, and what challenges remain.

Most forces (83 per cent) have used the opportunity of higher officer numbers to evaluate demand across the board, a majority using the Force Management Statement process introduced by HMICFRS. A number of forces (27 per cent) went further by reviewing their operating models, for example Derbyshire Constabulary and Wiltshire Police. For many, investment decisions are strongly driven by the views of external bodies (Police and Crime Commissioners and HMICFRS inspections (29 per cent), as well as professional judgment (37 per cent).

Clearly, there is a risk that chief constables use the main tool at their disposal (officer capacity) to address issues that might be tackled more effectively in other ways (staff, automation etc). Few forces raised this pitfall, albeit one chief constable explicitly sought whether “performance could … be achieved with changes to processes, systems, leadership …without a presumption that the answer was increased officer resources just because they were becoming available”).

Additional capacity has often been allocated to areas suffering from backlogs, delays and poor performance, and therefore workflows are expected to improve and with it the quality of outcomes (such as less case attrition to court). Because the increased capacity is provided by more experienced officers moving from response / frontline into specialist areas (in particular investigation and public protection areas), some forces expect that these areas will benefit disproportionately – and therefore become more productive.

The reactive choices in terms of capacity increases show that policing is still “catching-up”, “shoring up commands under pressure”, and trying to stabilise and strengthen the core functions of the policing model – patrol, neighbourhood and volume crime investigation. From a productivity angle, a majority of the capacity increases are not yet driven by “best bang for buck”, but by “squeakiest wheel”.

Importantly, a number of forces (but not all), have simultaneously implemented (or strengthened) performance measurements, governance and benefits realisation to accompany the officer increase. Some even assigned “each area of uplift a dedicated project manager and a benefits manager” to baseline and monitor “the benefits which are measurable improvements resulting solely from the investment of resource”. That said, impact monitoring and evaluation is patchy across forces.

An increase in officers does not in itself increase productivity. Without the right leadership, the same workload might be spread across more people without any improvement in output, quality, or outcome. The organisation might lose impetus to make further efficiency drives (for example through technological investments) simply because there are more people to carry out tasks. In Appendix, the Review is expanding on the major impact to date of the capacity investments made by forces. The Review has found the quality of data and evaluations inconsistent. Yet given their size, policing capacity investment should be project-managed, and their impact evaluated with the same rigour that forces might apply to a capital or technological investment. Robust data and performance management will help drive better results and show what produces best results. In time, these will support the policing sector articulate – and evidence- the public outcomes that investment in policing can deliver (in future Spending Review rounds for example).

A temporary experience shortfall

The main drawback of having increased the officer population so fast is a negative short and medium term impact on productivity because a large proportion of the total workforce lack experience. As at 31 March 2023, 36 per cent of all officers (where the length of service is known) had less than five years’ service (53,774 headcount).

In the very first stage, there is a demand on the system (where everyone is geared towards delivering the officer numbers, recruiting, vetting, training etc). During that time, the new workforce is not fully deployable (“very large numbers of students with 20 per cent protected learning time, lots of tutoring and double crewing and a level of inexperience”).

In a second stage, the new recruits need close supervision, guidance and support from first line managers (sergeants). This is at a time where the organisation does not have enough experienced officers at (or promotable to) sergeant level (and above) which forces are addressing through leadership development programmes and uplifts (e.g. Humberside Police’s new LEAD programme, Greater Manchester Police’s sergeant uplift).

Forces estimate that the uplift benefits will increase in stages and be fully realised by 2025. This highlights a third stage: new recruits will first help address demand in generalist areas but specialist areas will continue to experience shortfalls until the newer recruits have accumulated the experience to become, for example, PIP2 qualified detectives and armed response officers, cybercrime investigators, and roads policing officers etc. Forces will need time to translate capacity increase into capability improvements. There is a natural lag between investment decisions, having the people in place and fully realising the capabilities required from that investment.

Future capabilities

The Review asked chief constables about which areas they would be seeking to expand further, if there was another uplift in the future – and found many areas of consensus.

A focus on neighbourhood policing remains important. A chief constable highlights that “including the proactive and investigative capability – this is where policing by consent is maintained, and this is where problems can be addressed early and sustainably”. Whilst the uplift allowed forces to fill the most pressing resources gaps and consolidate core functions, in the longer-term, it is clear that they want to use the capacity gained to develop new proactive capabilities for early intervention and “essentially … go upstream of demand”.

A majority of chief constables pick investigation as the top priority for the future (and the most needed capability). This includes volume crimes, where more detectives could enable the delivery of quality investigations in a timely manner, increasing victim satisfaction and justice outcomes. It also includes high harm areas such as rape and sexual offences (with national initiatives such as Operation Soteria and forces (re)establishing dedicated rape investigation, child abuse or domestic abuse teams). Initiatives in forces to recruit more detectives (Accelerated Detective Pathways, Detective Degree-Holder Entry Programme and DC IPLDP+ entry routes…) have gone some way to reduce detective vacancies, but the experience gap continues to impact specialist investigation teams. Whilst the uplift has recruited generalists, forces suggest that a future uplift could be focussed on recruiting specialists in known and future skills gaps such as detectives, including in areas such as safeguarding and digital forensics.

Response to fraud remains a challenge. Forces will not be able to make a substantial impact without a radically different approach.

Chief constables highlighted a number of continued capability gaps for which the use of additional officers may not be the most productive approach. Indeed, these could often, more cheaply and effectively be filled by staff (i.e. capabilities that do not need warranted powers) – as well as the right technological investments:

• Case management (case building, progression and general case administration) where there is good scope to improve case quality, convictions – and better support victims and witnesses through the criminal justice process.

• Investigators in public protection and fraud where there continues to be a national capacity gap. Norfolk Constabulary introduced Police Digital Investigators to unlock the lines of enquiry for detective constables precisely because the officers did not have the skills to “grapple with millions of rows of complex data”. With the proliferation of crime taking place (or enabled) online, forces should have scope to access staff capabilities in that area.

• Forensics and in particular digital forensics examiners and drugs experts. The Strategic Assessment of Workforce 2022/23 acknowledged that digital forensics is a recognised skill, within which there are a range of detailed specialisms – network analyst, network architect, a data scientist. These skills need to be bought in or developed in house. Most of these roles are filled by staff so increased officer capacity will not bridge the gap.

• Control rooms to manage demand at the first point of contact (for example triaging non-police mental ill-health demand and expanding virtual response teams who can address cases at first point of contact).

• Professional Standards to address corruption and to respond to higher vetting requirements and changes to APP Vetting 2023

• Analysts, and specifically data specialist, data science /AI and predictive analytics. Police forces need to be able to keep pace with a changing technological and economic environment – digital forensics, data science, robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber skills, access to research and development.

Whilst data exploitation presents an opportunity, it can only be seized if forces compete in an employment market for technical skills that are much in-demand. This is reliant on forces being able to either fund internal specialist posts, train people in-house (who get “regularly ‘head hunted’ for commercial roles”) or bring in external specialists. As a chief constable notes: “policing in general is not tech savvy and opportunities are lost due to this skill gap, especially as criminality becomes more sophisticated and the use of advanced technology grows so rapidly. This slows down productivity significantly.” This also suggests that more mainstream training should be developed to increase information management and data literacy within the officer cohort.

Resourcing flexibility can support productivity

With inflation and budget pressures, the de-facto ringfencing of police officer budgets is leading to staff and police community support officers (PCSOs) becoming a cost to be managed downwards, rather than an asset bringing in the specialist skills that complement operational police officers (many police staff roles are frontline – custody detention officers, PCSOs, despatchers and call takers in control room)^{[footnote 65]}.

A core principle for productivity is to select the right tool for the job, one that has been designed to perform certain tasks, streamline processes, reduce the time required to complete that task and maximise output. It is no different with the workforce. Whenever a force posts a police officer where their powers or specialist expertise are unnecessary, it is in effect paying an additional £16,000 per year to do something that someone else might in fact be better qualified to deliver^{[footnote 66]} .

To an increasing degree, this is what is happening. To take one example: since 2014 the proportion, and number, of officers in business support roles (as opposed to officers in frontline or frontline support) has increased. In 2014, there were 3,304 officers in these roles, rising to 6,352 in 2023 (costing forces an estimated additional £101 million than having staff in these posts)^{[footnote 67]}. Five forces had less than 2.56 per cent of their officers in business support posts. If all forces managed to reduce it to that level, 2,883 full-time equivalent officers would be released to the frontline.

HMICFRS 2022 Value for Money profiles showed that 28 per cent of the workforce in central communications units (contact centres) were police officers (2,930 out of 10,304). Five forces had less than five per cent of police officers, while three forces have over 40 per cent. If all forces managed to reduce their level to five per cent, then 2,415 officers would be released to the frontline.

There has been a similar trend in the neighbourhood policing model: to achieve the savings requirements, the number of PCSOs have been cut significantly, thus blunting the potential impact of the uplift, and reducing the ability to further invest into other areas (See Workforce appendix). Between 2012 and 2023, police forces have lost 20,089 PCSOs and special constables^{[footnote 68]}.

More resourcing flexibility would provide forces a competitive advantage in accessing the right mix of specialist skills and experience. It would also permit the release of more officers to the frontline. One chief constable notes: “we would welcome a future position where we can match the best resource type to the service requirements whether they are police officers or police staff. Such a position would avoid the very likely scenario of replacing staff with police officers, driven solely through necessity for savings”.

In addition, strategic workforce planning in the sector should include all roles in police forces (including human resources, finance, digital, data/IT professionals and staff in policing delivery such as investigations, safeguarding and multi-agency collaborations) – so that the sector is better able to articulate the public benefit that will stem from staff, PCSOs and other roles. The annual NPCC Strategic Assessment of Workforce provides a strategic assessment of the police officer workforce, but it needs to have access to the same depth and breadth of data for police staff.

Wider risks to workforce productivity

There are a number of risks that chief constables were clearly alive to in their responses:

• Attractiveness of policing as an employer and changing workforce aspirations: the young labour market has different aspirations and expectations of ‘work’ and the ‘workplace’, with less desire for a ‘job for life’ and more for an ‘employer of choice’. The challenges faced by policing in terms of trust and legitimacy are also impacting on the attractiveness of a police (officer or staff) career.

• Turnover: high levels of officer turnover is partly a factor of the changed demographic within forces. The highest level of officer turnover occurs during the first 1-3 years of service, and forces currently have a bigger proportion of their workforce in that range. Turnover will also be driven by the increased mobility in the workforce market, and the culture – and support- that new recruits find when they start.

• Capabilities resilience: as the uplift has focused on filling historic gaps, some specialist capabilities that previously existed, have not been reinstated, other specialist teams are small in number and therefore resilience remains an area of risk.

• Internal and external collaboration: rigid operating models create silo working and initiatives to better align demand to more appropriate partners (for example the Right Person Right Care initiative) require a culture change to ensure the public is served effectively.

The condition of the workforce

Training

As demand has radically changed, and technology has become a critical element in every process, the policing approach to training must evolve. In 2002/03, 80 per cent of crimes were either theft, criminal damage or burglary. Today, the crime type mix is much wider: violence (with and without injury), theft, fraud, stalking and harassment, and public order offences make up the top 80 per cent. What an officer needs to know, and do, today is drastically different. They need specialist knowledge on the complex disclosure and digital processes, as well as interpersonal skills to optimise interactions with the public to maintain and enhance trust, the confidence and ability to support vulnerable victims, and a wide set of knowledge across more varied crime types. Police officers and staff therefore need to continually develop their skills and knowledge to serve the public effectively^{[footnote 69]}.

Yet sector clarity on skills profiles, needs and provision is lacking. Skills and capabilities – and how forces identify, develop and strengthen them – are a key element of productivity. Yet, the Review has found that, outside some limited specialist roles, there is no quantified sector overview of forces’ future capabilities needs, nor a clear picture of continuous development needs and provision for officers and staff already in role. The mandatory annual refresher training for frontline officers is limited to “use of force”, first aid and driver training, even in teams whose primary role is investigation^{[footnote 70]}. The national continuous professional development requirements have not kept up with the speed of change of the external environment. Policing is not good at quantifying – in advance of these becoming acute problems - the skills gap (whether in terms of roles or in terms of capabilities) that it needs to prioritise and fill. While some specialist areas have in place minimum nationally accepted training requirements (i.e. armed policing and public order policing), there are no national standards for the majority of roles (for example, there is no nationally mandated refresher training for investigators).

Training is often presented as a panacea to failings or underperformance in individual areas. Rarely is a coroner’s or inspection report published without a call for improved training. For example, recent HMICFRS reports find that officers “have a flawed understanding of a Home Office outcome code” and recommend “chief constables should make sure their officers are trained in (its) use”^{[footnote 71]}; that the length of the “initial command training … course be increased”^{[footnote 72]} ; that officers should understand why they need to collect personal information and that the College of Policing should mandate a “specific learning module… for all relevant police officers and staf”^{[footnote 73]}, etc. NPCC leads will frequently advocate increased training in support of their national portfolios. Police forces also want to train their officers and staff in areas that address local priorities or underperformance.

Added together, this creates considerable demand that is poorly prioritised. The College of Policing sets service standards and quality-assures learning delivery but it made clear to the Review that it does not mandate training on forces. The College of Policing highlights that forces can take a risk-averse approach by training officers and staff in subjects that not everyone needs for their role. Some forces have said they do this to avoid HMICFRS criticism and argue that the external recommendations they receive can create challenging levels of abstractions, and that prioritisation – and the resourcing impact of training demands – should happen upstream.

Moreover, the “business case” is not robust in terms of resourcing and cost. Whilst training needs are tactically identified, it is rare that considerations include their cost and resourcing requirements (including the cost and impact of abstraction). The proportionality between the resourcing and expected benefits is also never considered, let alone costed. Evidence is usually not provided as to how (and the extent to which) the training will improve outcomes. Training inevitably comes with abstractions from duties (a not inconsiderable demand for smaller forces) and with the implied assumption that the workforce will deliver a better service after the training. An 8-hour training day mandated for all police officers is the equivalent of 1,196,528 police officer hours - that is an annual capacity reduction on forces equivalent to 676 officers (plus the cost of trainers and facilities etc). Therefore benefits must be robustly quantified.

There are some positive signs that both training evaluation and costing are being considered more robustly across forces. Avon and Somerset Police piloted the new Public and Personal Safety Training Refresher Course based on a new Curriculum – and this is being evaluated in terms of its actual impact on the police use-of-force. The expanded curriculum would require additional time and an investment in training staff, facility and equipment. NPCC have estimated the additional cost to policing could be between £30 and £40 million a year – and raised objections to the new approach. The NPCC has committed to working more closely with the College of Policing in the commissioning of national training. The Review welcomes both the evaluation and the cost benefit discussions across partners.

Alternatives to training to bring about the desired behaviour change are usually not considered. Nationally and at the force level, policing does not seem to be able to effectively quantify skills and capability gaps in relation to actual demand. Until this understanding exists, the argument in favour of increased training lacks an evidence-base. The College of Policing is clear that, especially where a behaviour change is being sought (e.g. improving interactions between police officers and members of the public during stop and search encounters), alternatives to training (such as improved supervision or behavioural insights approaches) may be more effective^{[footnote 74]}.

And a more agile approach can provide opportunities to improve cost effectiveness. Police training is still not modular (commanders in multiple disciplines will be repeatedly trained on command principles and the national decision model). Overtraining young in service officers can result in wastage if they leave within a few months. Turnover is higher earlier in new recruits’ careers: those voluntarily resigning almost a third (30 per cent) are within the first year of service and just over half (53 per cent) within the first two years.

Police Officers typically carry out 20 weeks (800 hours) of training before they begin “on the job training” whereas Special Constables are able to begin after only 4.6 weeks (184 hours)^{[footnote 75]} and the Police Now national graduate leadership program constables after eight weeks (320 hours)^{[footnote 76]}. This indicates that “just in time” approaches to training could also be taken with conventional probationer officers, reducing the loss of investment should the officer either find they do not wish to continue their career, or alternatively if the force recognises, they are not suitable.

Forces must introduce better evaluations of training. Substantial funding is spent on training (£438 million according to HMICFRS/CIPFA figures^{[footnote 77]}), but it is not clear that police forces evaluate the cost or effectiveness of training. Police forces survey attendees but do not assess the impact on public outcomes or the productiveness for the organisation (e.g. improved criminal justice outcomes, reduced complaints, improved victim satisfaction). The College of Policing has led on some evaluations: for instance, a 2020 study showed a one-day training course on stop and search revealed no clear training effects on the quality of practices. A one-day DA Matters training course for first responders had positive effects for some indicators of knowledge and understanding of coercive control, but no impact on officers’ general attitudes to domestic abuse^{[footnote 78]}. The policing sector needs to take a more systematic approach to evaluating the impact of training. Some forces, such as Durham Constabulary are for example looking at the outcome improvements that follow training sessions (such as file quality or problem-solving).

The Review recommends that more robust evaluations of the impact of training takes place, and that training needs to be seen as an investment proposition: the College of Policing (and other regulatory bodies) should assess and clearly set out the expected benefits and costs (time and financial) of any new compulsory training courses or guidance, to minimise any negative productivity impact and ensure that resourcing implications are proportionate to the expected benefits.

Sickness and absence

Activity to improve data reporting^{[footnote 79]} of the Police Uplift Programme has improved the national picture of the status of the workforce. Despite this, there remain gaps, such as condition and sickness. National consolidated data received by the Home Office is often inconsistent or missing^{[footnote 80]}. The National Police Wellbeing Service (Oscar Kilo) also reports discrepancies in how forces define and record police officers who are unable to undertake full duties^{[footnote 81]} and “no national consistency in quality of the data collected for leavers (from policing) to enable any meaningful analysis”^{[footnote 82]}. The Review supports the NPCC workforce lead’s recommendation that forces adopt the national workforce data standards and agree broader collection of staff data in relation to specialist capabilities, but they must go further. Workforce reporting requirements should be strengthened to include consistent data standards, leaver and sickness data, including reasons and time lost – and the data should be published.

The Home Office collects absence data from forces annually. On 31 March 2023, over 8,000 police officers were absent from the workplace with 5,900 absent due to sickness (about four per cent of the officer workforce). 5,113 full-time equivalent officers were on long-term absence (including 2,537 long-term sick, 1,424 parental leave; 658 career breaks; 481 suspended^{[footnote 83]}). An estimated 3,368 officers were on short and medium term sickness^{[footnote 84]}.

Experimental data collected by the Home Office shows police forces reported 11 million police officer hours, and almost seven million police staff hours were lost annually to sickness absence in 2022/23^{[footnote 85]}. This equated to a median percentage of 4.38 per cent of total officer hours, and 4.71 per cent of police staff hours lost to forces. This is higher than the national sickness absence rate in 2022 of 2.6 per cent and public sector average of 3.6 per cent^{[footnote 86]}.

There are substantial differences in sickness levels across forces. In terms of long-term sickness, two police forces reported 3.4 per cent of their officers were absent; for three forces it was less than one per cent. For short-term sickness data, three forces reported losing over six per cent of their total officer hours, whilst two forces reported less than three per cent^{[footnote 87]}. It is also worth noting that police staff have a higher absence rate than police officers^{[footnote 88]}.

The differences between forces suggest improvements must be possible in the less performing forces. If they were able to decrease their sickness rate to the current policing average, this would create a national gain equivalent to 1,025,731 officer hours (580 full time police officers) and 806,840 police staff hours (492 full time police staff)^{[footnote 89]} . This would be enough officer time to attend every single burglary reported to police between January 2021 and the end March 2023^{[footnote 90]}.

If one pushes further, and forces were able to reach the performance of the top quartile, and reduce their hours lost, then this would create a national gain of 2,044,813 officer hours (1,156 full time police officers) and 1,179,348 police staff hours (721 full time police staff).

Northumbria Police reports that it has reduced the number of officer hours lost to sickness absence by almost a third since 2019/20, having adopted an evidence-based approach to target activity at prevention and where it can achieve best effect. This has included proactive monitoring of sickness data – and pro-active management of cases, use of wellbeing surveys and seeking data from their external occupational health provider to allow them to identify and address threats. Rather than providing a wide suite of options that officers and staff can use if they choose, the force targets a smaller amount of activity at those it assesses as requiring support. Northumbria Police has also taken a robust position around reduction of pay for those who are long term ill and those seeking medical retirement, as well as prioritising assessments so that cases are dealt with promptly and issues addressed to prevent delays. The force however raised the risk of the national shortage of selected medical practitioners who can make decisions on ill health retirement. What should be a three-month process can take up to a year due to the lack of practitioners.

Evaluation of targeted activity to reduce the hours lost to sickness absence

An improved understanding of the condition of the workforce is vital to develop the right occupational health and welfare investments. Medical and welfare support options should be prioritised against the most impactful injuries and illnesses, and proactive targeting of at-risk groups can prevent more costly treatment, and keep the workforce healthy. A better understanding of the police workforce also offers an opportunity to copy the approach of the armed forces, by engaging local Health Trusts to unlock further support.

Police forces are committed to helping their workforce “realise their potential, be resilient, and be able to make a productive contribution to the police workforce”^{[footnote 91]}. Investment in workforce welfare can provide valuable returns, but Deloitte shows these returns can vary widely^{[footnote 92]}. Oscar Kilo offers a national approach, toolkits, and funded programmes for police forces through the Blue Light Wellbeing Framework^{[footnote 93]}. But it also highlights that forces (at the individual and macro level) are poor in linking existing data from separate systems to improve occupational health, welfare and absence management (for example, looking at units’ workloads against sickness levels, or operational patterns against the nature of absences etc).

In seeking to identify the most impactful programmes, the Review noted that police forces implement a plethora of health and wellbeing offers but it could not find evidence of evaluation of effectiveness from a productivity perspective.

This is also borne out by an analysis of officers’ absence rates (Home Office data of hours lost to sickness) against the proportion of forces’ budget spend on occupational health (HMICFRS Value for Money data). The Review does not find a significant correlation between sickness performance and the level of occupational health spend. The correlation between sickness performance and forces’ human resources spend is weak. In short, forces are expending considerable resources on a plethora of occupational health initiatives – with little evidence that they are all used effectively, and delivering tangible outcomes.

Oscar Kilo must work with police forces to baseline and evaluate the impact of occupational health and welfare offers. This will improve impact and value for money, and by sharing results with Oscar Kilo, help policing identify effective or ineffective practices.

Limited duties police officers

On 31 March 2023, over 13,000 officers were not able to undertake full duties^{[footnote 94]} (limited duties) about 8.7 per cent of the officer workforce. Of these, 5,665 officers were on recuperative duties^{[footnote 95]}, and 7,630 on adjusted duties^{[footnote 96]}. The categories cover a wide range of situations: some limited duties officers work from home on reduced hours, while others may be on full hours, carrying out full duties, but are medically prevented from regularly working overnight.

Figure 5: Rate of officer ST and LT sickness vs forces budget proportion spent on occupational health

The proportion of officers on limited duties has risen since 2017^{[footnote 97]} but the rates of recuperative and adjusted duties officers vary across forces. In 2023, two police forces reported that less than two per cent of their police officers were recuperative or adjusted duties, whilst four forces reported a rate over 12 per cent.

The national median average rate of officers on recuperative and adjusted duties is 8.9 per cent. If forces above the median were able to reduce the proportion of recuperative and adjusted duties officers to the national average, this would return almost 1,900 police officers to full duties (3.4 million full duties hours)^{[footnote 98]}. This should be an ambition in the less performing forces.

Several police forces report that limited duties officers are kept on their original teams, carrying out office duties for their colleagues or managers that will not make a most productive use of their capabilities. In contrast, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary has a rigorous process to track and understand the reason why police officers are not available for deployment and get them back to full duties. This includes a formalised process to move officers into adjusted duties roles for 6-12 months or a capability process to allow officers who are no longer able to carry out the role to “exit the police force with dignity” within 18 months. The force will also fund private medical treatments where they can make the business case that NHS delays will cost the police force money in lost hours. As a result, the force assesses that its operational hours lost to sickness absence and limited duties combined is less than eight per cent (compared to the national average of 12.7 per cent).

Remote attendance and desk-based investigation

Desktop response and investigation. In a bid to increase their efficiency, a number of forces have, in recent years, set up desktop response units which straddle response and investigation. The efficiency benefits are twofold. First, the crime reports directed to the desktop team are the high-volume low-risk ones which a force assesses can be progressed without a physical deployment, and in doing so, more capacity is released across frontline patrols for other deployments. Secondly, the posting of medically restricted officers in desktop teams makes best use of their capabilities whilst they work back to a full operational status – it also strengthens the proportion of fully deployable officers in the response teams.

For example, Norfolk Constabulary’s desktop investigation team (Op Solve^{[footnote 99]}) handles 26 per cent of the crime reports in Norfolk, from calls through to remote victim appointments, desktop investigation and either resolution, closure, or if needed, allocation to frontline officers to take the case further. South Yorkshire Police – which has a similar team, has allocated a “welfare sergeant” in recognition of the additional support these officers may need. Gloucestershire Constabulary’s Triage Team set on similar principles also helps support seasonal peaks, stabilising its response function at times of higher demand^{[footnote 100]}. Merseyside Police is investing 104 officers in a Scheduled Incident Resolution team (from July 2023), forecasting that 22 per cent of demand might go through that team.

Dealing with incidents and crime remotely improves productivity, by reducing unnecessary travel, improving timeliness and evidence capture, and service to victims. Derbyshire Constabulary’s Crime Resolution Investigation Management Team of 27 officers deal with over 4,000 crimes a month. Police officers on recuperative duties already have the required skills to “attend” and carry out initial investigations, preventing productivity losses in training or workload handovers when they transfer into or out of desk-based attendance or investigation teams. Police forces should expand the use of recuperative and limited duties officers and staff using the models that some forces have already implemented such as desk-based attendance and investigation teams.

Whist such teams can help a force manage the incoming flow of demand more efficiently, the challenge is to ensure that effectiveness and victim satisfaction are maintained. Some forces show that victims are content because of the timelier service they receive – however this is not granted. North Yorkshire Police^{[footnote 101]} observed that using recuperative officers in their desktop team did not result in a stable offer for victims and led to a disproportionate amount of service complaints. A more permanent team of officers (including adjusted duties officers) will provide a better service in their view.

Rapid video response

Rapid Video Response (RVR) has enabled officers to use video contact to deliver a much-improved service to victims, improving victim satisfaction whilst also reducing the time it takes officers to respond to calls.

With a rising number of domestic abuse calls and police arrival times taking longer, in 2021, Kent Police piloted the use of video contact to respond to non-immediate domestic abuse calls for service, enabling the police to assess risk, safeguard victims and secure critical evidence in a swift way. The domestic abuse hub creates crime reports and ensures victims receive the appropriate response. It risk-assesses investigations and where appropriate share information to applicants of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, allowing applicants to use the intelligence to take action to safeguard themselves.

This approach was based on a previous, successful 2020 experiment with voice-only telephone communication (launched before the pandemic) with non-domestic crime victims: over three months, police call takers in one control room screened and randomly assigned over 500 such cases to either the current business as usual practices for such cases or RVR by a uniformed police officer.

In its June 2023 review, RVR reported a 99 per cent victim satisfaction, 84 per cent positive criminal justice outcome compared with 64 per cent under the previous processes and 8,620 hours have been saved.

Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Essex Police, Hertfordshire Constabulary, and Suffolk Constabulary are now operating RVR for domestic abuse related calls. Kent Police and West Mercia Police and others are currently trialling non-domestic abuse calls using the RVR process.

Recommendations

Police forces should improve the productive use of medically restricted (recuperative and adjusted) duties officers and staff. The Policing Productivity team should develop further recommendations on all restricted categories by March 2024. Chief constables will also need to look at the potential to strengthen the management of sickness and absence in their force (Recommendation 12).

Training needs to be considered as an investment proposition: the College of Policing (and others) should assess and clearly set out the expected outputs and outcomes against costs (time and financial) of any new training courses or guidance (Recommendation 13).

NPCC and the College of Policing should build on the Strategic Assessment of Workforce to develop a future-focused sector skills plan for officers and for staff, scoping capabilities, gaps and training needs (Recommendation 14).

Home Office should support forces to minimise the number of police officers posted in back- office or business support functions where their warranted powers are not required (Recommendation 15).

Technology as a productivity multiplier

For policing to make a step change in productivity, significant improvements are needed in how the sector identifies opportunities, prioritises investments, and adopts solutions.

Technology complements investment in people by enabling efficient, effective, and safe working across all areas of policing, from creating administrative efficiencies that free time for frontline duties, to delivering tools that deliver a cheaper, faster, and more agile operational response. While forces are alive to this value, it remains challenging for them to deliver progress at pace. The diversity in IT systems, challenges in attracting and retaining skills, the absence of clear legal frameworks and a 43-force structure can lead to fragmentations in development and implementation, that make realising the opportunity difficult. Successes found at force level are often not replicated nationally, or rolled out slowly, and they focus on smaller ‘quick wins’ instead of anticipating the strategic opportunities for the service of tomorrow.

This chapter highlights where technology is already improving productivity and it sets out a roadmap to prioritise innovation and unlock the full potential of science and technology for productivity. Its recommendations 1) promote a system where force- level successes can be adopted rapidly nationally, potentially worth up to 15 million hours, and 2) rebalance national investments away from a focus on technical debt to a profile that delivers innovation, manages future risks, and capitalises on the value of science and technology. The chapter has been developed through collaboration led by the chief constable of South Wales and Vice Chair of the NPCC, and the Chief Scientific Adviser to Policing.

Science and technology delivering productivity improvements

The NPCC Strategic Plan states that it places science and technology “at the heart of its strategic thinking, to maximise the resilience, preparedness and agility of policing both now and in the future”. The ambition is to deliver the technology-driven capabilities the public expects, and to innovate beyond this to enable policing to keep ahead of criminal use of technology.

In a recent innovation mapping exercise, forces in England and Wales reported 64 examples of science and technology driving productivity. The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser to Policing estimates that these 64 projects saved 347,656 of workforce hours per annum and led to direct net savings of £8.2 million a year in costs. If they were scaled nationally, and similar gains assumed for 43 forces, potentially up to 15 million hours could potentially be saved annually. Clearly, this belies the complexity of national adoption, but it gives a sense of the current untapped value of innovation in policing.

Figure 6 illustrates the breadth of technologies introduced in the last two years. They include the use of Robotic Process Automation to undertake repetitive tasks such as double-keying, fusing data, and finding errors is delivering in days what it would take a workforce years to accomplish.

The national data systems, such as the Police National Computer and Police National Database, are also key to productivity because they enable fast and reliable national access to nominal information and intelligence. For example, the Home Office estimate that the Law Enforcement Data Systems, which is replacing the Police National Computer, will generate a net present social value of £95 million^{[footnote 102]}. Retrospective facial recognition, which is one element of the capability in the Police National Database, underpins results in over 100 cases per month in South Wales Police alone.

Automation and robotics

A number of forces are using a Robotic Process Automation Process (RPA) to free-up frontline officers’ time by completing tasks such as linking victims as witnesses, Computer Aided Despatch log reporting, duplicate victim referral check.

In 2019, Avon and Somerset Police, partnering with IBM, began work on automating processes across four key improvement areas: crime (freeing up frontline officer time), vetting (reducing the backlog), data quality and corporate services (improving user’s experience). Avon and Somerset Police use RPA in vetting, data quality, command and control, and procurement process. The force has automated 44 processes with 4.1 million cases processed, freeing up the equivalent of 200,000 staff or officer hours (70 full time equivalent). The value to productivity is cumulative, since RPA improves case file quality, which has a positive downstream effect in the criminal justice service.

Devon and Cornwall Police and Dorset Police are working together to roll-out automated processes. They currently have 6 to 9 automations operating.

Greater Manchester Police invested £50,000 in a Singe Online bot for when the public submit a report via Single Online Home. A process that originally required manual input, the bot automatically reads the PDF and inputs the necessary information. The technology has delivered efficiency equivalent to five people per day (working 10-hour shifts), this equates to a cost saving of £131,000 per annum.

The City of London Police introduced a chatbot for Action Fraud (its national fraud and cybercrime reporting service) which manages around one million calls a year. The chat bot was introduced to run in parallel with the existing chat service as an additional education and high-level triage service. In 2023 the average hours saved by the bot was 950 per month allowing additional chat and voice interactions to be managed by contact centre staff. The bot is being developed to use a controlled generative AI solution (for better understanding and context).

In Lancashire Constabulary, 12-months of RPA has generated £2 million savings following a £864,000 investment, saving the equivalent over 100 officers. Their efforts focused on enhancing data quality and removing duplicate/triplicate records that were creating an ever-increasing risk to the force. Lancashire Constabulary estimated that tackling the data quality backlog manually would take 94 years. With the bots, the equivalent of 34 years of manual data cleansing was done in just nine months.

West Midlands Police had over 500,000 duplicate nominals records existing in the Records Management System. RPA was deployed in January 2023 with up to seven bots running at peak. The automation has resulted in 299,000 duplicates being removed, 22,000 hours returned or £510,000 generated cost savings.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland are using bots to trawl their systems for linking, sending crime references to victims and to ‘auto crime’ incidents that haven’t been attended. Each bot costs £4,500 a year. The service is equivalent to nine staff and improved data quality by 20 per cent.

Building on proof of concepts delivered by Cheshire Constabulary, the West Coast Niche Collaboration has invested in Robotic Process Automation. This work has involved the automation of criminal justice related tasks resulting from interactions with the CPS. The use of robotics has reduced backlogs, improved consistency, identified the causes of failure demand, saved 3,288 hours.

Figure 6: the value of technology to operational policing

These science and technology innovations in policing have realised the equivalent of:

• 350,000 hours of capacity freed each year
• £8.2 million cost savings each year

Addressing incoming demand - major events

Milestone server, South Wales:

• brings together multiple data feeds to enable tactical overview, provides real-time oversight of important events and incidents
  • enables the force to respond better and have a larger impact on crime and public protection

Addressing incoming demand - responding to the public

Analytics for everyone, Essex:

• cloud-based analytics service enabling more efficient data access for officers
  • missed victim contact reduced from 18% to 5%, also resulting in reduced hidden risk

Single online home, nationwide:

• single online home reduces non-emergency telephone contact demand - the chat bot can fully deal with 20% of call demand
  • unresolved calls reduced from 39% to 9%
• robotic process automation (RPA) for data input and record management frees up officer time and reduces errors
  • 667 hours capacity freed/month and £131,000/year saved

Action Fraud chat bot, City of London:

• a crime record system sitting on top of an existing system to enable better user interface, easier data input, and improving the data capture process
  • 640 hours or capacity freed/month and £200,000 annual saving

Prevention and deterrence

Risk terrain modelling, Metropolitan Police Service:

• a model to identify the environmental features that connect with crime patterns
  • provides significant insight into crime and will help guide strategic decision-making, focusing time and resource appropriately

Investigations

SentrySIS, Durham:

• public and partners can upload evidence and statements and send directly to police via the online platform
  • 220,000 hours of capacity freed and £570,000 saved in fuel costs improve data security

Marple, Greater Manchester:

• this solution overlays and integrates directly with PoliceWorks, enabling users to input their crime data more quickly and accurately
  • 20 mins capacity freed/crime recorded or 200 hours per day

Protecting vulnerable people

Mental health app, Gwent:

• enables officers to undertake all mental health related issues on a simple application
  • 12 mins capacity freed per form (234 hours/year), improves data quality and consistency, and better equips officers

Rapid video response, Kent:

• video tool enabling domestic abuse victims to make contact with the force within minutes
  • response time of >32 hours reduced to 3 minutes, 50% increase in arrests and 89% positive victim response

Managing offenders

Robotic process automation, Bedfordshire, Avon and Somerset:

• automatic case file redaction tools remove personal and sensitive information
  • anticipated benefits of up to 70% reduction in time spent redacting material, and improved compliance with disclosure legislation

Operation Fulcrum, Metropolitan Police Service:

• digital tool supporting delivery of police-led Out of Court Disposals
  • 85 mins capacity freed per caution

Managing serious and organised crime

Dark web investigations, East Midlands Special Operations Unit:

• design and delivery of pioneering capability to target a dark web site - enabled full data access, leading to worldwide disseminations to law enforcement agencies about plans for the murder, rape or kidnap of victims
  • 10 arrests and 79 individuals safeguarded

Operation Yardbird, Thames Valley Police:

• New Drugs Coordinator, streamlined forensic examination and reporting process to expedite charges of possession with intent to supply drugs
  • cost savings of £4,000/month, faster processing and increased charges

Using resources more effectively to drive innovation

While current efforts are a step in the right direction, the pace of progress is insufficient. A considerable resourcing and leadership shift is needed, from replacing old systems to embracing innovation. The Government Office of Science estimates a £7 return for every £1 invested in science and innovation^{[footnote 103]}. The policing sector should aim for a similar return on its science and technology investments.

The Chief Scientific Adviser to Policing estimates that 97% of today’s science and technology investment in policing is spent on maintaining existing technologies. This is not sustainable technically because policing will continue to accumulate technical debt while falling behind societal, or criminal, use of technology. Whilst some forces see the need for cutting-edge capability and are seeking to independently address this; this can often create duplication and national misalignment. Getting the balance right between ensuring existing systems are ft for purpose and making the most of new innovation is challenging but central to making sustainable productivity improvements.

The ‘70-20-10 Model’ row in Figure 7 shows an often- advocated^{[footnote 104]} split across the categories of 70, 20, and 10 per cent. The model recognises the primacy of delivering against today’s challenges but also anticipates that a failure to innovate will leave policing with a rising science and technology debt. The model advocates a shift to a more efficient investment profile that better prepares policing for future needs.

For the sector to achieve this within its current funding envelope, efficiencies will need to be found in the current major law enforcement programmes. Some of these efficiencies are beginning to emerge as programmes better manage delivery and reduce instances of over-running and overspending. Others will need to come from close working with industry to introduce competition and efficiencies that eliminate pricing structures that do not represent value for money.

More fundamentally, to achieve this will require bold action to guarantee the sector invests in tomorrow’s policing technology as well as sustaining today’s capabilities. A multi-year mandated spend on innovation should be established, as occurs elsewhere (for example, the Ministry of Defence invests 4.5 per cent in research and development annually). This will protect next generation funding, particularly if there is overspend on the replacement of older systems. The spend for this budget should be responsibility of NPCC’s Science and Innovation Coordination Committee and Home Office Public Safety Group Commissioning Board, with oversight from the Strategic Change and Investment Board.

Figure 7: core annual investment in existing technology, adjacent innovation and next generation capability

Strength in consistency: structures to enable innovation

By investing across the innovation lifecycle (see below), policing can become better at articulating its technology requirements, supporting small-scale innovations with disruptive technologies, and scaling-up solutions. Whenever possible, 43 forces acting as one national customer rather than interacting independently with one supplier, would create tangible efficiency gains.

To help the shift to a more efficient investment profile on innovation, effective governance structure and associated processes are needed. The recent formation of the new NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee for national policing will map all innovation projects across policing, promote linkages and encourage collaboration across forces and with expert leads. It can support investment across identified and agreed priorities, by becoming the single source for evidence based-investment, providing assurance to stakeholders and decision-makers on the technological solutions that have been proven.

Two factors are critical to the success of this process and the Committee’s delivery. The first is knowledge sharing. Often, business cases and evaluations for technology investments are undertaken locally within a force. There is no systematic way for chief officers to access the evaluations made by other forces, nor to identify what innovation they are not taking advantage of. The result is an innovation economy that works largely by word-of-mouth. The new coordination function for science and innovation in NPCC, supported by a National Science and Innovation Board, should address this. It should maintain a map of innovation across policing, encourage collaboration between forces and portfolios, and give transparency to all stakeholders, enabling clarity of decision making.

The second factor relates to the upfront investment that is needed to implement the technology. Constraints on capacity and capability, variations in infrastructure that prevent easy transfer, and the difficulty in recruiting sought-after specialists., can make it difficult for forces to deliver the upfront investment, despite recognising the longer-terms gains.

Recent investments in robotic process automation and automatic redaction have successfully addressed this problem by giving forces a short-term boost in funding to initiate a solution with the expectation the force then take on the business-as-usual running cost. This model should be encouraged.

Engage a vibrant, accessible, diverse and multidisciplinary community, collaborating by default

Communicate across policing, industry, and academia to build awareness of policing challenges and catalyse a shared sense of effort.

Explore S&T threats and opportunities using horizon scanning tools, considering public support, fairness, ethics, and legal and regulatory environments.

Prioritise using a robust process, on what S&T we will lead, collaborate and follow, and decide, based on available resources, where we will invest our efforts.

Evolve with partners high-quality, ethical S&T that delivers for the user now and in the future

Research using systematic, multidisciplinary investigation issues and possible solutions, to improve our knowledge.

Innovate by working with industry and academia to turn knowledge into solutions that create benefit, such as new tools or better processes.

Build complete solutions that encompass workforce, policy, legal and public accountability, and are designed to last.

Embed and support S&T solutions so the gains to policing are made rapidly and are maintained

Source S&T using effective commercial models. For S&T that is commercially available, this is where the journey for the solution starts.

Deploy the solution, train people to use it, and operate it, including maintaining it and ensuring there is sufficient resilience.

Evaluate existing S&T to drive further development, assess the value being added, and to identify and address any unintended effects.

Local innovation to national adoption

The federated model of policing within England and Wales means that science and technology efficiencies are not enjoyed uniformly across regions. Even technologies that are available to all forces, such as retrospective facial recognition (see box below), show considerable variation in their adoption and use. Some variation is to be expected as forces respond to their localised requirements and operating environments. However, for many solutions, there is a compelling case for national adoption to deliver economies of scale and consistency in service – yet the powers to make this happen are not in place.

An agreed process to adopt nationally those solutions that yield significant benefit will help drive policing productivity. This process should provide forces with assurance on the technical, legal, ethical, and workforce value of the solution, as well as blueprints to aid adoption. The evidence from existing examples points to benefits that include sharing best practice, burden sharing on development, procuring together at a preferential rate, and greater staffing resilience as tasking is shared across forces.

If forces shy away from collaboration on these matters, national policing performance is bound to suffer. Indeed, when a technology has demonstrated its benefit to the public, the failure to adopt the solution in a force area will lead inconsistencies in the nature and quality of service across the country. Chief constables should be required to have due regard for the implementation of recommended technologies. HMICFRS’ role should include identifying where opportunities are not being adopted and provide challenge as to why not. For instance, they might consider Rapid Video Response and the Bedfordshire Police use of a redaction tool and report on why they are not being exploited by policing.

The national delivery organisations should play a central role in delivering this assurance process. The Police Digital Service and Blue Light Commercial should play a pivotal role in delivering national evaluation, accreditation, procurement, and coordination of capability development. At a local level, the right framework would need to be put in place. This includes appropriate change management capabilities to ensure change is communicated well, training requirements are met, and change champions are networked to ensure peer support and continuous improvement models. Effective solutions cannot be ‘parachuted into’ a force to scale its productivity without the right local framework in place.

The College of Policing’s efforts to produce accessible guidance on police adoption of new technologies is a welcome step to giving forces more assurance on how and when to implement innovations. Its Smarter Practice framework provides a single home for discovery of evaluated solutions that drive productivity.

To be effective, however, this framework needs to be able to draw on underpinning evidence. A recent reviewed highlighted that policing undertakes 0.002% of the evaluation in practice undertaken by health^{[footnote 105]}. Additional investment in evaluations of current practice is needed if productivity gains are to be delivered.

The UK’s national labs, such as the Defence Science and Technology Labs and the National Physical Laboratory, could also play an important assurance role. Their current focus on legally mandated assurance could usefully extend to providing independent assurance across the full range of policing’s science and technology. This would provide chief officers, parliament, and the public more confidence in what is being delivered.

A case study: retrospective facial recognition

All forces in England and Wales use retrospective facial recognition technology through the Police National Database, but four further forces (South Wales Police, Gwent Police, Leicestershire Police and the Metropolitan Police Service) also have local solutions that allow access to further images through local record management systems. It has been recognised that there is opportunity to further utilise the technology nationally beyond current levels, with increased usage a priority of the Ministerial Scale Up Plan “Embedding Facial Recognition in policing”, which will be monitored over the next twelve months by the NPCC and Home Office.

Retrospective facial recognition searches the facial image of a suspect or missing person against a large national database to ascertain their identity (for example, using the CCTV image from a late-night bus to quickly identify the perpetrator of a sexual attack).

A lookup process that used to take days can now be achieved in seconds. For one force of 3,000 officers, the time saved amounts to an annual efficiency savings of £250,000 and the successful prosecution of over 100 incidents a month.

The use of retrospective facial recognition varies across forces. In 2022 the NPCC stood up a national capability to support its use nationally. Its experience reflects the challenge of national adoption of a demonstrably effective capability.

The facial recognition legal landscape is delivered through a ‘tapestry’ approach which includes primary legislation, codes of practice and local policy, whose complexity can raise legitimacy concerns. In addition to the generic difficulties of scaling up such technology, the ability to explain effectively to the public how the technology works, how it is used and how it protects communities is essential.

Public consent and law

The Peelian principle of policing by consent places an important requirement on policing’s adoption and use of emerging technologies. Policing has a duty to demonstrate and explain to the public what a technology is doing, and that its use is proportionate, lawful, accountable and necessary. The Home Office also has an important role to play in providing a framework to enable adoption of new technologies. This context has a significant bearing on policing productivity because inappropriate use, or a failure to use technology when appropriate, can have deleterious effect on justice and legitimacy.

There are three considerations that must sit alongside any investment in innovation:

1. Public trust and legitimacy of technology use: the public may be concerned about technology replacing human decision making. A lack of clarity on the technology, its proposed use or governance may be compounded by low levels of trust in the force.

2. Ethics: Technology must be developed and deployed ethically with legitimate purpose, have appropriate data and privacy controls, and be compliant with the Public Sector Equality Duty. If policing’s use of innovation and technology is to gain public trust and confidence, an independent national ethics function is required.

3. Legal: the pace of innovation and complexity of new technologies means legislation, authorised professional practice or guidance often lag behind. Forces therefore lack the provision of a clear framework within which to operate some innovations. In their absence, the legal landscape is fragmented and includes primary legislation, codes of practice and local policy. This is challenging for forces and the public to fully comprehend, which hinders deployment or fuels legitimacy concerns.

While the factors that contribute to police legitimacy and public trust are multi-faceted, greater engagement, communications with the public on how technology is to be used, and the ethical considerations that have informed its deployment will help to build this trust.

The potential for improving police productivity through technology is very significant. It is an area of considerable focus and indeed a recent Police Foundation report looks at improving public police relations with technology^{[footnote 106]}. It is an area in which considerable progress must be made in the next short to medium term. It is essential chief constables maximise the opportunities of pooling effort and learning from others.

Recommendations

To shift the dial further towards innovation in science and technology, some funding arrangements should be changed.

From April 2024, funding for science and technology innovation in policing should be ringfenced. Home Office ministers should consider pump priming innovation funding of £50m per annum for at least two years (using the STAR (Science, Technology, Analysis and Research) funding model, sharpening the focus on investment that will have the biggest impact). If successful, this investment should move to a permanent footing (Recommendation 16).

To derive greater productivity from technology, it needs to be easier for forces to adopt new solutions. Making these three changes will create the right enabling framework:

The new NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee should provide an assurance function for science and technology solutions, including timely guidance on cost- benefits, ethics, productivity impact and workforce implications. The Chief Scientific Adviser and the independent Police Science Council should review the efficacy of this assurance function by the end of 2024.

There should be a presumption that forces will adopt the solutions put forward by the NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee. Chief constables should be asked to give due regard to the Committee’s recommendations and their response should be understood as part of HMICFRS inspections.

The system effectiveness in achieving the adoption of recommended solutions should be reviewed by the Policing Productivity Review team by September 2024.

The Home Office should provide active leadership so the legislative and regulatory framework enables implementation of technological innovation by policing. Communication with the public and stakeholders is a key part of the Home Office’s role (Recommendation 17).

To ensure the right talent is attracted to, and retained in policing, there should be a clear people strategy for science, technology and innovation in policing, to be tabled at the new Science and Innovation Coordination Committee by January 2024 (Recommendation 18).

The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser should implement structures that encourage the dynamic, coordinated and efficient exchange of ideas and collaboration between policing and industry (i.e. reducing separate force-by-force conversations), working with organisations including the Accelerated Capabilities Environment and others. The effectiveness of this should be reviewed by the Policing Productivity Review team in September 2024 (Recommendation 19).

Force Management Statements should be amended to draw out the value of science and innovation to force performance. To support this, working with the new NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee, HMICFRS should develop a framework that supports forces assess the capacity, capability, delivery and impact of science and technology solutions (Recommendation 20).

Model process

As referred to earlier in this Review, two recurring factors significantly hamper better policing productivity. These are:

• an absence of data, or inaccurate data,

• unnecessary divergence of approach among forces to essentially common activities - along with a failure to adopt and share good practice where it is plainly evident and implementable.

In part, this is a consequence of the persistent notion (within policing itself) of exceptionalism. Namely the differences between forces matter more in terms of its operations and performance, than the similarities that clearly exist between them.

This phenomenon or stance, a self-declared uniqueness is not confined to policing. It was also found in hospitals by the Carter Review (2016), its title summing up the essential problem faced by the NHS: ‘Operational productivity and performance in English NHS acute hospitals: Unwarranted variations’^{[footnote 107]}. Unwarranted variations also hold back policing.

As a result of the recommendations from the Carter Review, the health sector adopted the concept of the Model Hospital, developing a digital information platform/service to help NHS providers improve their productivity and related efficiency and effectiveness.

The Model Hospital tool is widely used today, and the productivity gains have been considerable. It was reported that Model Hospital examples could save the NHS £5 billion a year by 2020/21 and put an end to the unnecessary variations it uncovered across the sector.

Whilst there are clear differences between health and policing, there are several notable parallels. These include high demand, a dispersed federated sector, and significant local autonomy. However, forces also have core common processes which, with consistent use of data, can be improved, accurately costed, and compared force-against-force.

The Review, with PwC, developed and piloted a policing equivalent of the Model Hospital - a digital tool trialled and tested with six forces and referred to as the Model Process.

Using the Model Process for antisocial behaviour and burglary dwelling, the pilot forces could free up the equivalent of 500,000 hours for reinvestment/ redeployment to other areas of policing priority.

Deployment of this tool across all police forces and all crime types provide significant opportunity to improve policing productivity.

The starting point: how policing is currently measured

Crime and policing performance is currently measured in numerous ways. Crime statistics are captured in the Crime Survey for England and Wales and the police-recorded crime data from the Home Office. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) PEEL (Police Effectiveness, Efficiency and Legitimacy) collect data and assess performance through their inspection process. Forces and police and crime commissioners also, produce various reports and analysis for both internal and external (public) use.

The information usually focusses on traditional measures of performance (such as arrests, charges, and other criminal justice outcomes). Whilst these measures are useful, in isolation they do not enable police leaders to drive productivity. It is this gap that the Model Process seeks to address.

The Model Process uses new and improved data points to enable meaningful comparisons that, when analysed and presented, point the way to better productivity.

Costs and outcomes are clearly an important part of understanding one’s productivity. For the development of the Model Process, the Police Activity Survey (PAS) has been used to create unit costs although this needs greater refinement.

Model Process: proof of concept

The Model Process provides a new and invigorated tool to engage directly with productivity.

During the Review, a Model Process proof of concept was developed. The tool was designed, built, and tested in collaboration with six pilot forces (Cumbria Constabulary, Durham Constabulary, South Wales Police, Thames Valley Police, West Midlands Police and West Yorkshire Police) alongside NPCC national leads and subject matter experts. To ensure differences in force area demographics were captured, the pilot forces were both rural and urban, varied in geographical size, had wide-ranging population sizes, and differed in levels of deprivation.

The proof of concept focused on burglary dwelling, antisocial behaviour, domestic abuse (with the subsets of controlling and coercive behaviour, violence with injury and adult rape and serious sexual offences), and public contact.

This work involved close consultation with HMICFRS, the College of Policing, NPCC leads for the four areas of focus, the NPCC lead for performance, and the National Analytical Working Group.

Working closely with the Home Office’s Police Activity Survey team, unit costs from officer and staff surveys were generated to illustrate the relative cost of completing comparable activities within each pilot force. These costs, with additional analysis, provided relative comparisons of cost information for forces. This was then juxtaposed against granular performance data in each of the subject areas.

The tool enables users to break down performance and cost by different segments of a process. It prompts the standardisation of processes and enables (perhaps for the first time in policing) a ‘process taxonomy’: common and consistent names or labels for what are essentially the same activities across forces. To assist this, the Review agreed standard definitions with the participating forces and wider stakeholders for core activities.

How the model process works

The Model Process collects data from various sources, and through analysis creates a (PowerBI) dashboard providing the user with:

• The main or primary processes used across different forces in relation to a given crime or police/policing activity,

• The performance and cost for these specified steps/processes, and

• Potential levers/activities forces could use to improve their productivity.

An illustration of this approach is shown below for one crime type – burglary dwelling.

The tool shows the richness of the data available to forces using the model. As well as a high-level force breakdown of key metrics by process step, it contains a summary of interventions other forces are using (which the user’s force is not). Vitally, it also shows the costs for each step of the process - Prevent, Respond, Solve and Reassure.

In addition to strengthening the evidence base behind the levers outlined above, the Review partnered with the Cambridge Centre for Evidence Based Policing to identify and evaluate existing burglary academic research. The evaluation provides:

1. an approximate cost for implementing the intervention,
2. a rating on the quality of the evidence and,
3. an impact rating

The residential burglary toolkit places greater validation on what levers within the Model Process are evidenced to work and provides succinct and informative summaries for over 20 initiatives. For example, Nudge Theory^{[footnote 108]} and Cocooning^{[footnote 109]} have a good evidence base with medium positive effect. By contrast, Property Marking and Traceable Liquids^{[footnote 110]}are well evidenced but have no effect and there is limited evidence that this is a productive use of resource.

Accompanied with the summaries is additional information on implementation of an initiative, how to measure its effectiveness and where additional research would be beneficial to address current gaps in knowledge e.g., electronic tagging, testing of video doorbells, algorithmic tools etc. Bringing together insight like this, and the evidence base led by the College of Policing, will be important elements of the future development of the Model Process tool.

To illustrate the power of the Model Process, below is the force comparison page for burglary. It allows comparisons in greater detail on matter such as metrics, cost breakdowns and comparative insights by process step against other forces. This includes the ability to filter by similar forces on various characteristics.

The schematic (Figure 9) demonstrates the mapping part of the Model Process. This shows the often- different steps that a force may take from point of call, to final closure of a case/investigation.

These steps clearly illustrate (with burglary dwelling as the continuing example), how the Model Process significantly enhances the way a force can review their investigative processes and, perhaps for the first time, truly understand its productivity.

By using the tool a force will have:

• Better quality information/data

• More meaningful comparisons to prompt questions about its own productivity

• Access and understanding of unit costs

• Insight into which levers could improve its productivity

• Data to encourage chief constables and their staff to easily discuss performance and improvement opportunities with other forces in a supportive and constructive way.

How good are we at preventing burglary dwelling?

• 0.4 Burglary crime rates per 1,000 citizens

• 3.2% Burglary as percent of recorded crime

• 7.9 percent repeat burglaries at same property

• 7.5 percent repeat burglaries with same victim

What more could we do to prevent burglary dwelling?

• Hot Spot policing

• Advertising

• Regular contact

£5.4 unit cost of prevention

How good are we at responding to burglary dwelling?

• 84.5% burglaries where an officer has attended
• 128.1 mins average speed of police attendance
• Not provided mean time to initial victim contact
• 12.1% forensic conversion rate

What more could we do to respond to burglary dwelling?

• Burglary App

• Dedicated media portal

• Victim needs assessment

£595.5 unit cost of response

How good are we at solving burglary dwelling?

• 13.9% of burglaries where arrests are made

• 5.0% of burglaries with positive outcomes (outcomes 1-8)

• 23.2 suspect to arrest time

• 0.4% of positive outcomes where TICs are made

What more could we do to solve burglary dwelling?

• Crowd-sourced intelligence gathering

• Dedicated Investigation team

• Digital media analysis

£1,134.7 unit cost to solve

How good are we at reassuring the public on burglary dwelling?

• 81.3 victim satisfaction

• 5.0% burglaries which are fagged as domestic abuse related

• 110.1 average time between burglaries where there is a repeat property (days)

• 109.8 average time between burglaries where there is a repeat victim (days)

What more could we do to reassure the public?

• Drop in surgeries

• Visible patrolling

£16.13 unit cost of reassure

Productivity performance

Output/evaluation

82.2% U - % of burglaries where an officer has attended in person

33.7 L - Mean time to victim contact (hours)

18.1% U - Forensic Conversion Rate

Input/contextual

% of forensic assessment completed virtually	0.0%
% of forensic assessment completed physically	-
% of burglaries where CSI have attended in person	48.6%
% of burglaries where CSI have attended virtually	65.8%
Average speed of police attendance in-person (mins)	717.63
Average speed of police attendance virtually (mins)	4,166.25
% of burglaries where scene preservation advice is given at stage of initial report	-
% of burglaries where appropriate crime-specific advice is given and questions are asked (initial report)	-
% of scenes where DNA or fingerprints are retrieved	52.3%
Average time spent with the victim (mins)
Median time spent with the victim (mins)
% of vulnerable victims per incident	5.4%
% of vulnerable victims contacted within 48 hrs	8.2%
% of victims contacted within 1 week	14.9%
% of victims contacted longer than a week	0.3%

Figure 8: burglary response force comparison

Application of the Model Process in policing: key findings

The Model Process tool - accepting that it is still being developed following the six-force pilot and wider stakeholder feedback - has been well received by stakeholders and practitioners.

The broad consensus is that it has huge potential. It represents a much-needed development for the sector in raising productivity. This will drive better outcomes for the public.

Findings from the pilot include:

• The Model Process provided pilot forces and NPCC national leads with a better understanding of the benefits of alternative processes to increase prevention, timeliness of response, solvability, and reassurance. In short to make something more effective.

• The Model Process allows forces to identify alternative models that could be more cost effective and/or deliver better outcomes. In short to be more productive.

• If the pilot forces involved in trialling the Model Process all moved to the most cost-efficient model for two of the crime types - antisocial behaviour and burglary dwelling - almost 500,000 officer hours would be freed-up. Such new capacity could be used to attend 250,000 incidents of domestic abuse or over 300,000 burglaries.

• A further example of the potential of the Model Process can be seen in casefile complexity and timeliness. Advances in forensic science and technology, greater CCTV/camera coverage potentially increase lines of investigations, but they have added substantial time demand on investigators. Simultaneously, developments in professional practice, Forensic Science Regulator’s (FSR)^{[footnote 111]} accreditation and increased regulation such as the Director’s Guidance on Charging (sixth edition) have multiplied steps and administration in the investigation process. As a result, the Metropolitan Police Service, based on its professional insight, estimates that a volume crime investigation such as burglary might take two to three times longer than it did twenty years ago. The Police Activity Survey has also identified that the six pilot forces typically spend between £74 and £392 on a casefile for burglary dwelling. Such a wide and varying cost band leads to obvious questions over what processes and activities influence this variance in cost and what needs to change to optimise productivity.

Making the Model Process work across the whole of policing

In creating and piloting the Model Process, the Review inevitably encountered several obstacles to its adoption and integration into policing. These would need to be addressed if our recommendation to require forces to adopt the Model Process were to be accepted. They include:

• The Home Office Police Activity Survey is a vital component of the Model Process. To bring meaningful insight, the survey needs to take place regularly: the Review suggests every six months. Home Office and partners should work to enhance the data the survey collects, whilst simplifying input and interface for the survey recipients. Once the process has been simplified, all forces should be required to participate in PAS.

• Data quality and availability was a significant challenge for the Model Process development team and the pilot forces involved. This indicates that the police service still has much work to do to ensure the right data is collected to drive performance, efficiency, and productivity. This remains an important area to address and needs some strong national coordination.

• Insights gained from the pilot forces, which are likely indicative of the wider policing landscape, found that victim feedback is limited. The Review welcomes work by the Home Office to develop a single national view of victim satisfaction. In so far as victim satisfaction is collected, it is largely non-comparable between forces due to differences in regularity, timing, and questions asked of victims. The Model Process can help strengthen the voice of the victim and the public.

• At a more local level, but remaining on the theme of victims, the Review found forces have very limited ability to provide data on specific victim demographics. In several instances, forces could not break down even basic data by victim demographic. This impacts policing’s ability to effectively understand how it is currently serving different communities.

• Throughout the review, and notwithstanding the era of strategic collaborations that the service has been through in the last 10 to 15 years, the Review identified a lack of collaboration and sharing of best practice between and amongst forces. This is discussed further in Chapter 6: Endowment Fund and Chapter 4: Technology as a Productivity Multiplier, however, the Model Process provides a clear view on what others are doing, and the impact they are having, in core areas of policing and this must be used by forces to raise their productivity.

Next steps

Police leaders, as well as national policing bodies such as HMICFRS, the Home Office, the National Crime Agency, NPCC and the College of Policing, see significant potential in the Model Process tool. To this end, 17 further forces will adopt the Model Process tool during the next 6-month period. This will help develop the tool more broadly and enhance the force-by-force comparison for the processes already in the tool, with the additionality of timeliness and quality of case files.

By bringing cost data and performance data together in this unique way, the Model Process will create ‘one version of the truth’, with all forces reporting on the same metrics for the same processes.

The tool provides an easily accessible and understandable process-map for each force in each area. This offers, for the first time in policing, the ability to see how a fellow force or forces operates and where and why corresponding outcomes differ.

To take the Model Process forward, further refinement and improvement will be required, including:

• Streamlining the metrics used to those that provide most value

• Reviewing the weighting of the data sets as part of the streamlining process

• Improvements to facilitate more consistent data entry and wherever possible use of pre-collected data

• Consideration to make the Police Activity Survey returns mandatory by all forces

• Engagement with HMICFRS, the College of Policing, and the NPCC to discuss how they will support the Model Process

• Police and Crime Commissioners to have a central role in the oversight of the Model Process. This requires development with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.

• Automation of data, both performance and cost.

Figure 9: Process map for the Respond phase of burglary

1. Contact received.

2. THRIVESC assessment (begins to be completed by a police officer immediately).

3. Call handler must give scene preservation advice.

4. Safe (saab) Tasking system entry created which includes any suspicion of crime - potential recording begins immediately for G3 and below.

5. Crime/non crime:

• If non crime, close and update victim.
• If crime, grade of the response.

6. Force policy for 100% attendance resource deployed by a response officer

7. Case allocation process:

• If reviewer available: allocated to detective (CID) - main officer team - each BCU.
• If reviewer not available: a proportion of burglaries enter a pot and reviewed and allocated the following day.

8. Scene/victim enquiries.

All residential burglaries allocated to detective for investigation.

Recommendations

Policing should adopt good practice used elsewhere to drive productivity. The Model Process tool should be developed and deployed to all forces in England and Wales over the next 18 months. Productivity improvements should be brought together by the Policing Productivity team and reported every six months to the Home Office (Recommendation 21).

Given the improvements needed in the criminal justice service, the Model Process tool should be developed further by March 2024 to include timeliness and quality of case file submissions (Recommendation 22).

The Police Activity Survey should be further enhanced by:

• Scoping the potential of technology to make it easier for officers to complete,

• Increasing the frequency of the survey to twice a year,

• Take up by all forces as soon as possible (Recommendation 23).

Endowment fund

Cultural, capability, funding and data challenges blunt policing’s impact

In visiting all forces across England and Wales, the Review found many examples of innovative work. But the Review also observed many forces re-testing what has already been evaluated elsewhere, or struggling to share data because their systems are different to that of their counterparts, or wrestling to show whether some investment project had been efficient and effective because they lacked the basic methodological capabilities to assess this.

The challenges faced by forces fall broadly under three categories. From our observations of example investments, and listening to senior police leaders and partners, the sector is very aware of some of its recurring cultural issues – albeit these are difficult to address in isolation:

• Overreliance on professional experience. Whilst much progress has been made to widen the use of evidence-based interventions, policing still relies, first and foremost, on lived experience and intuitional factors. The rigour of investigative and judicial processes (professional curiosity and the seeking of evidence to prove something beyond reasonable doubt) does not translate to resource investments. In short, before initiating a new policy or process, the sector often fails to ask: “what is the verifiable evidence base to do this?”. The demand for rigorous social and economic research into policing issues still often comes from outside of the sector rather than internally, and as the Director of the Police Foundation mentions: “There’s plenty of good research out there on policing. The problem is getting it into the bloodstream of forces”.

• Exceptionalism. Some good examples of cross- regional police forces and university collaborations exist such as the N8 Policing Research Partnership. But often cultural barriers prevail. South Yorkshire Police’s Chief Constable highlights “a reluctance to share and reluctance to fail” – and the effort required by policing to build relationship with academia. Some forces can be reticent to make their research available to other forces – partly because evaluations might not be rigorous, leading to a lack of confidence in the robustness of their findings. When good, evidence-based research and policy does get communicated to the wider sector, forces can view it as not applicable to themselves due to regional or more localised specificities – these can be overstated.

• Slow pace of innovation: As sharing across forces is not optimised, each force implements similar things in their own way, often with their own pilot phase, which drags the speed at which innovation gets adopted across the country. For example, the independently evaluated Rapid Video Response demonstrated significant productivity benefits to both victims, frontline officers, and criminal justice outcomes. Yet there has been a slow uptake of this across forces – and those that do will often re-test the findings on a small scale first. HMICFRS’ identification of “good practice” and the College of Policing’s What Works centre have helped disseminate good examples, but have not substantially altered the pace.

• Compartmentalisation. The policing sector recognises that the complex drivers of policing demand across many crime types (from youth violence, to cyber-fraud or neighbourhood safety) reach across sectors and partners. But whilst it acknowledges that enforcement on its own cannot resolve it, and that a “whole system” approach is required, it is unusual that analysis and evaluation looks at the end-to-end process across agencies (for example, in the way Op Soteria has for rape and serious sexual violence). Forces will look at their individual, regional demand, and more often at individual tactics within aspects of that demand. Further compartmentalisation also arises from evaluations failing to feed back into decision making, breaking a virtuous cycle of improvement.

Police forces also face capability and practical barriers in strengthening consideration of impact and value:

• Weak project evaluation capability. Many forces lack the capability to undertake sound, methodologically coherent evaluation, and the resources to do so are not prioritised. Many of these projects would benefit from the support of data scientists, academic researchers, analysts and those who specialise in independent evaluation to showcase the tangible impact and value to the public. Once a change has been implemented, there frequently isn’t the budget nor the people to review how the actual benefits compare to those expected in (if they exist) the original business case or against original baseline – and even less so to assess what public benefits are directly attributable to the change, and what it means in terms of public value. Consequently, as the Merseyside Police’s Chief Constable highlighted, there is very limited research within policing around cost benefit analysis, compared to what exists in the education and health sectors (“210 studies in policing, compared with 10,000 in education and over 2,000 in health”).

• Poor structures for sustaining focus. Funding of evidence-based projects is derived from two primary sources: internal (a grant from the Police and Crime Commissioner or within the existing budget), and competitively, by bidding from centrally held pots (usually Home Office) almost always based around a prescribed policing, crime prevention or reduction theme. Year-on-year, it is never clear how much funding will be made available, themes and priorities change, and pilots stop. The financial uncertainties make the sector focus on short-term solutions, at the expense of strategic direction or vision for the future. Financially, there are no incentives for police leaders to replicate ‘what works’ or proven pilots from elsewhere.

In its research phase, the Review noted the promising implementation of Crime Support Hubs across several forces (such as Cumbria Constabulary, Derbyshire Constabulary, Hertfordshire Constabulary, Norfolk Constabulary and South Yorkshire Police). However, challenges with data and differences in implementation meant comparisons across evaluations were not feasible, with stark variations in how success was measured, lack of baseline and rigour in methodology. Data quality and robustness must be strengthened.

• Data quality issues. The way data is captured, managed, shared, and used vary from force to force. This was apparent in the Review’s mental health sprint and again in the building of the Model Process tool. There is sometimes no meaningful data in circumstances where one would expect it to be – and when there is, definitions and interpretation for the same indicator can differ from force to force. The Review recognises the energetic work going on at a national level (particularly in the police IT and digital spheres) to bring about coherence to the data question, but it remains a weakness in building strong impact evaluations. This also makes research from another force difficult to read across with others.

• Data consistency and sharing. Forces view data as broadly for their own local use. However, the more data is harmonised, the easier it will become for research and knowledge to be shared, with everyone benefiting from the increase in evidence, quality and insight. Enhancing policing productivity cannot pass first base without police data that is accessible, timely, lawfully obtained, ethical, properly managed, ‘clean’ and used in a common and consistent way. Our recommendation for a Policing Data Hub reflects the need for policing to urgently address its data quality and consistency issues.

• Data linkages. Whilst there are significant data sources available to police (e.g. Police National Computer and Database), the extent to which it is possible to link data contained in these systems to the application of tactics, limits robust analysis. Some forces are looking at “data warehouse” or “data lake” solutions to address the issue.

Use of Power BI to increase effectiveness

The Review has found some stronger exploitation of data in some forces. For example, Leicestershire Police and Sussex Police are using Power BI to interface with a number of systems allowing automatic updating of performance, risk and management information. The forces have used Power BI to create user friendly dashboards to link data, manage resources, locate repeat missing people and manage high harm perpetrators. Analytics are used to manage and identify operational threat and risk by providing live oversight of demand, allowing the force to change how they manage non-urgent crime. Sussex Police reported a 17 per cent increase in crimes finalised plus 23 per cent increase in successful outcomes between July 2022 and July 2023 – as a result of improved sight of demand and improved agility response to it.

Derbyshire Constabulary is using a “recency, frequency, gravity” methodology to prioritise outstanding suspects/offenders based on the threat, risk, and harm they pose. This methodology allows for the more efficient targeting of resources and use of officer time. It is available in a self-service format and used by officers as part of their approach to reducing the number of outstanding suspects.

Surrey Police have a Power BI readiness project to increase productivity through scoring workforce capability and using it to manage allocation, identify hotspot areas and forecast future capability. The force identified the need to stabilise service levels in areas which fall under response to calls for service (i.e. reactive local and volume crime policing).

North Yorkshire Police is using Power BI to drive performance through live time compliance with response time service level agreements (15 mins for immediate urban, 20 mins immediate rural and one hour for priority grades). The force has recorded a change in compliance from around 50 per cent to consistently achieving over 80 per cent. The live time data feed allows supervisors to assess the most effective way to meet response times and ensures a clear rationale is recorded for those that are unachievable. North Yorkshire Police has been able to identify patterns across the force area and identify opportunities for changes to deployment locations to achieve success.

The resulting productivity losses for England and Wales and forces’ budgets

In summary, and from the Policing Productivity Review’s perspective, there are a number of productivity losses.

Innovation is poorly shared across the sector. Forces’ efforts and use of resource overlap or duplicate unnecessarily. Many investments made by forces are not as clearly baselined, measured, identified or evaluated as they should be. Patchy evaluations mean that innovations (operational or structural) remain underexploited. This impacts the sustainability of these pilots or investments, weakens future resourcing bids, and importantly it leaves funders, oversight bodies and partners unclear as to the value provided to citizens.

It follows that economies of scale are not obtained, whilst system incompatibilities (solutions cannot “talk to each other” across regions) and data inconsistencies across police forces are perpetuated. Commonalities between forces are high, particularly in terms of the crime demand they face, yet the current approach accentuates the differences.

This harms the sector in the longer term. Health has an established evidence base that can say with greater confidence what primary outcomes or outputs it will provide. It helps that healthcare has a history of high quality clinical, controlled trials. By contrast, policing has not been subject to that level of analysis. It has barely a decade of controlled trials, many are not high quality, and few decision makers take notice of them. At spending reviews, other areas of government are better equipped to demonstrate what outputs they can provide for what funding (based on better output standardisation and strong evaluations).

Given the scarcity of resources (and difficult medium- term financial outlook for many forces) and the complexity of demand, policing needs to develop a culture focused on approaches that have demonstrated their effectiveness, driven by delivering best outcomes to the public and value for money.

Earlier this year, the Chancellor highlighted his “four pillars of productivity: Education, Enterprise, Employment and Everywhere”^{[footnote 112]}. These categories might help delineate the support that would help the policing sector be more productive:

• Education: forces need access to the capability, training and skills required to evaluate and assess policies, resourcing and investments robustly. They also need to raise capability internally, through recruitment and training. The College of Policing is also expanding cross sectoral knowledge through its What Works Centre.

• Enterprise: new capability is required here to push the whole system approach, using a dynamic, entrepreneurial approach to lever wider funding and convene partners across sectors, stakeholders and service users.

• Employment: with forces incentivised to focus their staff and resources on the things that work, and to use productively the time freed-up by stopping what does not work.

• Everywhere: across national partners, stepping-up relevant, strategic and useable knowledge-sharing across forces, driving national consistency on data, and ensuring that smaller forces can be supported in their investments so that they benefit from innovation in the same way as the larger ones.

So what is the answer?

Compared to other public services such as health or education, the police were relatively slow to embrace the development of evidence-based practice. The last two decades have seen a discernible shift in policing towards evidence-based policing. There is now unquestionably a much greater acceptance that policing - particularly solving crime and tackling disorder - should, wherever possible, be subject to rigorous, evidence-based research and evaluation. This is in no small measure due to the efforts of the College of Policing.

Under new impetus, the College of Policing has started to re-energise its mission as a depository of good practice and grow its evidence base –initiating a What Works board with the NPCC, Home Office, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and HMICFRS in June 2023. In March 2023 it launched a practice bank with 46 example initiatives from forces and some partners (and at the time of writing another 100 or so going through process).

In gathering these, the College of Policing is dependent on forces and partners sharing their examples (only about half the forces have submitted examples). It publishes what it receives, and is largely dependent on what is already happening out there.

Many of the current examples however highlight the weakness of evaluation across the policing sector.

No initiative is classified as “worked”; of the 31 implemented, 22 are classified as “untested – new or innovative”, and another 19 remain fagged as “promising” despite most being initiated more than three years ago. Whilst there are some good examples of randomised controlled trial, the portal highlights the overreliance on participants’ surveys and informal feedback (“the communities … seem to like them”) rather than crime impact or victim outcomes.

The Crime Reduction toolkit has similar limitations: of the “interventions that work” only about three per year have been added in recent years; most date from 2019 or earlier. Again, of the 17 fagged as “promising”, 88 per cent are from 2019 or earlier – with no indication as to whether the early promises were confirmed and evidenced. This makes it difficult for other forces to know what might be worth investing resources in.

It is worth noting that a multiplicity of other tools are available from the College of Policing website: a research project map (for live projects – completed research then does into a National Policing Library), Safer Street toolkit, and many others. It also has work underway with the Ministry of Justice to develop a sustainable, cross-sector approach to cost benefit analysis. The good practice work complements the College of Policing’s wider role in setting standards in policing (Code of Ethics, Competency and Values Framework, Authorised Professional Practices etc), training and accreditation.

These recent improvements are starting to address some of the College of Policing’s self-identified weaknesses as set in its 2022 Fundamental Review (“insufficiently useful to policing at all levels in the drive to cut crime and keep the public safe”, “not responsive enough to demand”, “seen as too slow, risk-averse and bureaucratic, and not responsive to the speed, agility and dynamism required by policing”, “not widely recognised as a centre of expertise, despite the considerable experience within it”, and with “little capacity … for quality assurance” – as well as a number of specific self- recommendations to improve its “What Works Centre”, on accessibility, practicality, linkage to national priorities and tech areas, future scanning, etc.)^{[footnote 113]}. The Review fully supports the College of Policing in continuing these improvements.

Our Model Process tool, and our burglary toolkit, aim to help the sector strengthen evidence-based practice – and evidence-based resourcing. Practice improvements also depend on senior leaders and officers taking this research into account, trawling findings and having regard to the evidence when setting up initiatives in their own forces.

From a productivity point of view, cutting things that don’t work to allocate the resources to the things that do is an obvious win. The Police Foundation recommended in its Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales^{[footnote 114]}: “More police forces should establish Evidence Based Policing Units to carry out research, spread knowledge and promote an evidence and knowledge based culture”. The Review supports this objective – and some forces such as the Metropolitan Police Service are making great strides in becoming more data-led.

Defunct organisations such as the National Police Training, Police Information Technology Organisation, Centrex, National Policing Improvement Agency, National Crime Intelligence Service have previously aimed to drive improvement, knowledge and innovation. The work often happened at the back-end of the innovation space lacking the pro-activity to identify strategic gaps and the financial muscle in driving the research. There are tensions between driving standards across the whole of policing and prioritising resources to where the biggest improvement gains may be; between assessing impact and assessing value for money. Costs are rarely looked at in the context of outcomes.

The Review looked at how other parts of the public sector have introduced a different model to leverage better evidence sharing and support robust innovation.

• Nesta (formerly National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is an innovation foundation in the United Kingdom. The organisation acts through a combination of programmes, investment, policy and research, as well as the formation of partnerships to promote innovation across a broad range of sectors. Nesta was originally funded by a £250 million endowment from the UK National Lottery. The endowment is managed through a trust, and Nesta uses the interest from the trust to meet its charitable objects and to fund and support its projects.

• The Education Endowment Fund^{[footnote 115]} is an independent charity established in 2011 to improve the educational attainment of the poorest pupils in English schools. The Education Endowment Fund aims to support teachers and senior leaders by providing evidence-based resources and funded research designed to improve practice and boost learning. The fund is the biggest sponsor of schools’ research in England. A teaching and learning toolkit supports teachers and school leaders on decisions to improve learning outcomes and is easily accessible. The initial government investment was £110 million with the specific remit to help raise standards in underperforming schools. The Education Endowment Fund reports its toolkit is used by over 50 per cent of teachers across the country.

• The Youth Endowment Fund was established March 2019 by children’s charity Impetus, with a £200 million endowment and ten-year mandate from the Home Office. The mission of the fund is to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. The Youth Endowment Fund does this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. The fund evaluates every programme and activity that it supports.

These funds have research arms, programme managers, evaluation officers, data scientists and operations and implementation teams. In other words, these are delivery organisations not just grant-giving, nor knowledge repositories. They each have a clear, narrow mission with a measurable public benefit outcome: Nesta (Narrow the outcome gap between children growing up in disadvantage and the national average; For more people to live a healthy life longer; Making it easier for people to use clean, green sources of energy to heat and power their homes). Youth Endowment Fund (to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence), Education Endowment Fund (to break the link between family income and educational achievement).

What can an endowment fund do?

Investing capital or revenue in a national, shared area challenge – in the form of an endowment fund - could create a step-change in a fiendish policing challenge, as well as a domino effect on how the policing sector approaches productivity (best value and best outcomes) in delivery. The objectives of a fund in policing would be:

1. Bringing a strategic focus: it would aim to make a clear difference in one area: i.e. target a measurable public benefit outcome (on which the fund’s success should be measured). This should be a unifying issue or challenge shared by all forces, but which forces working alone have struggled to solve, and where the solution does not lie solely with the police. The Review expects the fund should aim to convene other parts of the public sector as well as service- users. A potential objective may be: - Raising public trust and confidence in policing across all demographics (for example by promoting public engagement, improved victim experience and the use of neighbourhood policing and prevention resources on what works), or
   • Stopping the rise in violence against women and girls (focusing on the effective targeting and disruption of offenders causing the most harm, effective case files and prompt criminal justice process, and wider victim support with policing partners), or
   • Reducing fear of crime (working with businesses, local authorities and others to enable an effective policing of drugs, shoplifting, antisocial behaviour in communities)
2. Match-funding and supporting research: An endowment could deliver mutual benefits by commissioning joint research/interventions. Funding to forces would be subject to an agreement that initiatives and policies would be independently evaluated.
3. Establishing impact and value for money: driving evidence-based practice, independently assessing the quality of the evidence presented. In a difference to past and existing approaches (“Grip” funding, early intervention funding, Project Adder, Safer Streets Fund etc), but vital in the current budgetary context, the fund would evaluate the impact and effectiveness in relation to costs and therefore value for money.
4. Promoting police collaboration, inclusive growth and knowledge transfer. The aim will be to provide collegiate momentum across forces, helping smaller forces benefit just as much, where previously they might not have had the capacity to do their own research.
5. Bringing in other partners to develop solutions: Bringing together expertise from policing (NPCC, Police and Crime Commissioners, the Home Office, the Accelerated Capability Environment and others), from other sectors, and service users (victim voice, for example). Connecting practitioners (including the frontline) with policy makers to improve policing. This would include practical assistance in translating good research into service delivery and working with the College of Policing to synthesise, make accessible, and disseminate findings across policing and key partner agencies. It would also provide a framework for research procurement and the potential to deploy capabilities into forces.
6. Thinking strategically and increasing productivity: the fund would deliver productivity gains through shared innovation across the sector. It would bring genuine rigour to the evaluation process, meaning greater confidence in investments made by forces and more meaningful impact from those initiatives adopted.

The conditions of success

The Review is agnostic at present with regards to the location of this proposed capability – there are pros and cons to each option. Wherever it sits, it will need the following attributes to minimise risk and have the greatest chances of success:

• Financial sustainability and independence: Endowment allows the capability to look long-term (a current systemic weakness). Funding should be protected from short term financial pressures and budget cycles and ensure funding is spent on priority governmental objectives. This opens the potential for multi-year support of initiatives (another systemic weakness). Independence would ensure its funding is not used to make-up for funding gaps in another part of an organisation.

• Charitable status, necessary for endowment funds, will ensure it works for the public benefit. Importantly, this will also allow it to leverage funding from other partners (and private sector in particular). This is important if the fund is to look into areas where the private sector can also do more to deliver (prevention, fraud etc). The charitable status also constrains spending to the area it has been set up to address (stopping mission slippage).

• Strong entrepreneurial ethos will be vital to ensure its appeal in convening stakeholders beyond policing, and the private sector. It needs to be equipped to engage with business and lever funds (it should have an objective / target to raise further funding from sources outside government). However, sited within an existing endowment fund might lower set-up and operating costs (the Youth Endowment Fund which is focused on youth violence might be an obvious candidate).

• Close relationship with the policing sector: in particular, the endowment will need to bring the College of Policing within its governance structure given the College of Policing’s role in promoting research (but partners will need to increase accessibility and communication of the research). The College of Policing will continue to help forces know what has already been evaluated (and to what level), what can be relied upon, and what cannot.

• But a whole-system approach: the demand that policing needs to address stems from a variety of social, educational or local drivers. Issues cannot be solved by police alone. Police and Crime Commissioners have a clear role in convening partners and their Police and Crime Plans often show the need for genuine collaboration across sectors, as equal partners. However, collaboration in research needs pushing further, to move the policing focus from “managing demand” towards delivering sustainable solutions. A fund should have the ability to promote cross-sectoral problem solving.

• Focused on public outcomes: the Review is proposing a relatively small fund to start with. In an endowment structure, a trust looks after the investment in order to produce a return. The return (five to ten per cent annually) is then passed on to a separate charitable structure which spends it on the specific aims for which it was set up. A narrower field of intervention will avoid the fund spreading its resources thinly and maximise impact (whilst the College of Policing will continue to cover the whole policing gamut).

In conclusion

Making an impact will require substantial investment and the Review proposes the development of a business case for the next Spending Review. A £40 million+ start- up funding (with potential for scalability) would signal government’s longer-term approach to innovation and productivity – these themes would become habit forming and ingrained within policing. It would demonstrate a commitment to evidence-based practice to drive greater efficiency, effectiveness, and value for money.

An endowment fund could significantly support forces in tackling a shared challenge for the sector – and a priority for the public. It would bring policing practice to a level more akin to health and education in terms of using a rational model of decision-making involving reasoning, facts and data. It would promote consistency of approach across the policing sector (in terms of implementation, evaluation, and prioritisation) – and bring about greater precision in policing, so that resources are used to deliver demonstrable public benefits (productively). With clear objectives on public outcomes and value for money, the fund would drive a more effective prioritisation of resources in the chosen area. This would provide external assurance to government and Police and Crime Commissioners that resources are spent efficiently and effectively. The Review recommends that policing partners, such as the College of Policing, should be engaged in the governance structure of this endowment fund.

Recommendation

The Policing Productivity team should develop an investment bid for the Spending Review towards the creation of a Policing Endowment Fund by March 2024. The Education Endowment Fund and Youth Endowment Fund provide sound models of how this could work. The bid should outline how the Fund could enable improvements in a priority area for public confidence (Recommendation 24).

Making the case for investment in policing

The police service must be able to evidence its value

The policing sector is at a crucial juncture. It has been boosted by 20,000 officers funded by government, and further capacity through local precept increase. Simultaneously the service has generally experienced marked declines in public confidence and legitimacy. Its performance is under the spotlight in areas from neighbourhood crime to rape and serious sexual offences, and upholding standards of professional and expected behaviour.

Whether considering the uplift or public perception, pressure is on the service to demonstrate and explain the public benefits it is delivering – as well as the improvements it is planning.

Spending Reviews are currently the mechanism which bring forces together to make that case, most often through NPCC. McKinsey argue that, for governments, “spending reviews (in their widest sense) have the potential to provide significant insight into budget allocations, enabling higher productivity and greater operational efficiency”. This includes “establishing granular financial and operational baselines, understanding the underlying drivers of costs, benchmarking the efficiency of spending to identify opportunities for improvement, and making recommendations to improve efficiency or reallocate resources”^{[footnote 116]}. This should also hold true for the organisations putting their case to government.

Demonstrating productivity is a core element of any funding case, whether in a period of expansion or contraction. In 2010, the spending review cuts were explained by HM Treasury with the argument that “police forces will need to focus on driving out wasteful spending, reducing back-office costs and improving productivity”^{[footnote 117]} (and therefore a central assessment that there were efficiency savings to be found in policing). Today, as government invested “over £3.5bn in policing between 2020-2023, in order to recruit 20,000 additional officers”^{[footnote 118]}, it is clear that the next Spending Review case will need to demonstrate that the policing uplift has been a productive investment that should be sustained.

But there are several challenges to the police service making an effective case

As discussed in the opening section of this report, the multi-output nature of police work, the breadth and blurring of the police mission and different views about what the service should prioritise make this a challenging task. Progress is required on the following:

Having data that can be relied upon…

Data, as evident across a number of the Review strands, is currently a limitation, when it should be an asset. Within forces, data quality varies, systems do not always permit the linkages of information in a way that could be helpful in establishing a granular understanding of cost and impact. Across forces, the lack of consistency, standardisation and information sharing also makes it difficult to establish a national picture. Working with the Home Office, there have been some improvements in recent Spending Reviews in terms of collecting mostly financial and input data. Yet the service needs to present “best evidence, numbers supporting the emotional evidence argument, particularly on areas like public contact, criminal justice, crime reduction”^{[footnote 119]}. Sectors that have a clearer productivity picture, such as the NHS, have invested in analytical capabilities. Some forces such as the British Transport Police, the Metropolitan Police Service and Sussex Police have teams, tools and methodologies in place to help them understand the cost and impact of resourcing – but this approach is nascent for many forces.

…to build a shared understanding of the value created…

Where there is some common understanding of “what works” in crime type areas, the Review has found that evaluation of innovation or capacity investment is patchy. As a result, forces are finding it difficult to define the value chain between resources, input and outputs or outcomes. The Model Process tool developed by the Review will help strengthen this understanding. It is important that the sector is able to better demonstrate the links between resourcing and outcomes, as well as the benefits of police investment to the national economy.

…will help evidence the resourcing needs

Chief constables agree that other sectors, such as the NHS are much better at articulating “and this is what you will get”. A number of forces, notably the National Crime Agency (in the context of organised crime networks) or British Transport Police (through its Capacity Planning Tool) have sought to improve how they measure the impact of their activities^{[footnote 120]}. A natural consequence of trying to evidence the public benefits that an investment produce is that the organisation becomes stronger at managing its data, at putting the systems in place to analyse it, and at understanding its demand.

Control works and capacity planning tool

British Transport Police is almost wholly funded by Network Rail, train operating companies and Transport for London. Under this arrangement, it is held to account by a Police Authority, which includes train industry representatives.

Consequently, it focuses on using data and economics to demonstrate the value policing brings to the rail networks. The force uses a Capacity Planning Tool for frontline demand modelling. The Capacity Planning Tool can model the resources required to manage the current level of calls for service, giving an accurate report of how many officers are required. This has given the force the ability to evidence the need for frontline resources to deal with a certain level of demand. British Transport Police use to build their medium-term financial plan as well. The tool can establish what is required to manage the current demand and what the impact of additional visible or proactive resources might be. British Transport Police also use economists to cost the wider impact of their work, and the wider financial benefits of their activities to the rail companies.

Speaking with one voice…

The Home Office represents about 1.7 to 1.8 per cent of the government’s total managed expenditure by departmental group^{[footnote 121]}. Policing in England and Wales accounts for broadly two thirds of the net resources received by the Home Office. But Home Office expenditure also includes Homeland Security, Borders and enforcement, UK Visas and Immigration, HM Passport Office and wider spend (Digital, Data and Technology and enablers such as tech)^{[footnote 122]}. The small proportion that policing represents in terms of government spending highlights the need for all 43 forces to work as one and develop a clear message, so that its priorities are clear to the Home Office, wider government, and the public.

…to paint a compelling national picture

“All forces tend to think they are an outlier, all using different data to make their case to the centre. This is likely to hinder rather than help the policing argument as a whole”^{[footnote 123]}. Within the sector, specialist capabilities (serious organised crime, fraud etc) also compete against each other. There are of course sectoral and regional inequalities (such as the local tax base and precept input). But many of the challenges that forces face (in terms of crime, public confidence, workforce or technology) are of a similar nature.

Coordination is improving: senior police chiefs and Home Office officials agree that delivery of the uplift programme has fostered a constructive relationship between the NPCC and the Home Office. There is a regular dialogue on finance, risks and challenges, and a good understanding of the sectoral issues. However, further progress is required: even though quite a fragmented structure, the NHS for example – in the context of spending reviews - remains better at presenting a unified national picture and make it relevant to the public. Force Management Statements produced by each force provide a potential building step for this – but they are not shared uniformly, nor consolidated – and not exploited to their full potential.

A strategic vision is necessary

An inspiring strategic vision…

the sector needs to turn its Spending Review approach from one that highlights budget gaps (pay, pension, inflation, net zero costs etc.) to one that brings about a collective commitment from forces on the public outcomes they would deliver with the funding (whether reductions in crime types, in victimisation or indeed commitments about service levels that people should expect from their police service). The sector needs to put vision, ambition and strategy at the core of its “case for investment”, and the costing of these ambitions – complementing the financial information on existing pressures.

…which creates consensus with ministers…

The defence and intelligence sectors have traditionally done well in past governmental budgets – as they are prepared well ahead of time. They are continuously scoping what areas are in need of investment. Their strategy is prepared with government ahead of any spending review. The strategic plan and priorities strengthen their argument for funding – as it then becomes a case of delivering an agreed strategy. The current NPCC strategy does not do this. It sets out a wide policing mission but does not prioritise, nor set, clearly defined outcomes (what the sector will achieve and deliver for government and the public). Simultaneously, over the course of a spending review period, a cluttered – and constantly changing – landscape layers up in terms of additional priorities or new strategic requirements. This can hinder focus and productivity. A sector strategy developed in close collaboration with national partners and Police and Crime Commissioners should aim to provide a shared, more sustainable, strategic foundation.

…and scopes future demand and the capabilities required.

The Review recommends that the policing sector has a sector strategy function which scopes future demand and shared sectoral ambitions for the future. The strategy should capture the public expectations of their police service, and translate them into the resources (revenue and capital) required to deliver them. NPCC, working closely with policing leads in workforce and in science and tech should highlight the drivers of demand, future challenges and opportunities, the capabilities the sector will need, and the innovation that should drive process efficiencies etc…

To have effective partnerships…

Chief constables point to the importance of prevention (for example, reducing escalation in term of offending, and therefore reducing both cost to society as well as demand into the criminal justice service). This is an area where academic evidence is supportive, but sparse. It is also a domain where police cannot deliver on its own. There are some good examples of forces that are managing effective partnerships – but all too often, as observed in the mental health or criminal justice area, the relationships with partners are transactional (sometimes allocating blame) rather than transformative for the service user.

…requires partners to articulate collectively a shared strategy and their roles

In the way that the “Integrated Review” reflects the integration of security, defence, development and foreign policy into one overarching policy document looking ahead, it should be a long-term ambition of police, health and criminal justice agencies to work with other parts of government to develop, and periodically review, a joint Public Safety strategy. Building from what is already happening in mental health, this process should help set what each partner must implement to ensure cross-departmental coordination, provide clarity of responsibilities, as well as better coordination and best public outcomes. A first step would be the creation of a national community safety board bringing together – at a minimum - national representation from police, health, education, and local government.

Progress in gaining public confidence…

The Department of Health and Social Care highlights how public trust and affection of the NHS is a prime asset in advocating for government investment. For policing, the Review has shown how these values are also inextricably linked with any productivity improvement: they should not progress at each other’s expense. An important component of funding sustainability will therefore be the ability of the service to regain trust and confidence – in terms of standards, and service.

…and the will to commit to results…

Whilst recent Spending Review cases were effective in scoping the financial pressures faced by forces across England and Wales, they also provided a sense that the police service was being overwhelmed by demand – and collectively forces could only promise an improved level of service and more activity against additional funding. This makes it difficult for Treasury to assess the value for money of this investment. Policing needs to get better at defining the public benefits – and metrics - that can be delivered on current resources, with a more experienced uplift intake, as well as with additional investment. The policing sector is wary of targets, they can create perverse behaviours. Yet chief constables often quote “what gets measured gets done”. Defining measurable ambitions or service levels can help mobilise a workforce to deliver a better service.

…also demonstrate synergy with Government priorities

A major element of any spending review is the delivery of ministerial priorities. The police argument has often been framed around the pressures and difficulties faced by the sector. A future spending review case needs to pivot to policing’s contribution to the national agenda, with clarity and measurable commitments on public benefits.

Recommendations

The Review recommends that in advance of the next Spending Review, the policing sector develops, and agrees with the Home Office, a sector strategy which scopes future demand, required capabilities and sets out clear shared ambitions and commitments in terms of public benefits. This should be led by NPCC, working with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (Recommendation 25).

The Review recommends that a national community safety board is set up, bringing together senior representation from the police, health, education, and local government sectors in order to better address shared strategic issues and provide a mechanism for change. The structure put in place will need to have regard to the devolution and funding arrangements in place for Wales (Recommendation 26).

Conclusion

Throughout the past twelve months, the Review has been focused on delivering better outcomes for the public. Visiting every police force in the UK, we have seen hardworking officers and staff dedicated to doing a good job. We have also seen areas where improvements can be made, by policing and its partners in the wider system in which it operates.

It has been heartening to see positive changes already made, enabled by the support of the Home Office and chief constables. The changes already agreed, in terms of how policing responds to mental health calls and how crime is recorded, are freeing up over one million hours which can be better used responding to and investigating crime.

The recommendations in this review – if implemented fully – would free up about 38 million police hours over the next five years to enable officers to deliver on the core policing mission. This is the equivalent of another police officer uplift.

It is important this momentum is sustained. To deliver this productivity uplift, we need energy and action across the whole system. Implementing these recommendations and improving further areas of police activity will be vital.

Policing has many challenges to face and improving productivity will help address them head on.

Recommendations

Cross-cutting

1. Data: Policing’s attempts to improve its productivity are currently hampered by the quality and consistency of data. Considerable work is underway to improve policing data and how it is used. However, to make the improvements needed more quickly, the following should take place:

• The College of Policing should bring together all parties currently engaged in improving police data (its quality, its consistency and its application) under the umbrella of a Policing Data Hub. The Chief Executive of the College of Policing should lead an urgent twelve-month programme to galvanise efforts to strengthen the police’s data capabilities.

• Data on the police workforce must improve: the reporting requirement must be expanded to include consistent data standards and more information on sickness and leavers.

2. Evaluating impact: Evaluation of organisational initiatives and changes in policing needs to be more systematic. Priorities for systematic evaluation are a cost benefit analysis of (a) training and (b) occupational health interventions. NPCC, chief constables, Police and Crime Commissioners and the College of Policing should collaborate and collectively agree the approach by March 2024.

3. Delivering further productivity gains: The Home Office should continue to fund the Policing Productivity team, as a freestanding unit for at least twelve months. The team should investigate further areas of potential productivity improvements (as outlined in other recommendations and including the potential of artificial intelligence) and monitor progress against recommendations made in the review. The team should report formally to the Policing Minister every six months, to ensure maximum focus and that the current momentum is sustained.

Productivity in policing

4. Organisations that review or inspect policing – including HMICFRS, the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the College of Policing - should have a duty to assess the investment implications of their guidance or recommendations. The two major considerations should be: (i) whether effectiveness has been demonstrated, and (ii) whether the required resourcing is a commensurate and cost-efficient way of delivering the expected benefits.

Barriers to productivity: delivering on mental health

5. The Review made a number of recommendations in November 2022 and February 2023 to improve productivity in how the public sector manages mental ill-health demand. The resulting national partnership agreement – including Right Care Right Person – is a significant achievement which should enable improvements.

To ensure continued progress, the Policing Productivity team and the national police lead for mental health should report to ministers every six months on implementation against the recommendations made in February 2023. The first of these reports should be submitted by 31 December 2023.

Barriers to productivity: delivering on counting rule changes

6. Following the work of the Review with NPCC leads, significant changes were made to the Home Office counting rules – the way in which crime is recorded- in April 2023.

To ensure the productivity gains continue, the Policing Productivity Team and the national police lead for crime data integrity should report progress to ministers every six months. The first of these reports should be submitted by 31 December 2023.

Proposals for further changes should be brought forward by the national police lead for crime data integrity by October 2023. HMICFRS should ensure their inspection approach reflects the changes.

Barriers to productivity: more productive criminal justice processes

7. The Government should carry out an urgent review of guidance and practice on how police submit case files to the CPS, with the specific intention of making processes more time-efficient and productive. Ministers should consider the findings of that review by June 2024.

8. Information sharing rules currently inhibit productivity in the criminal justice service. Two changes should be made:

• The Government should introduce an exemption to the Data Protection Act by March 2024 to incentivise closer joint working between police and the CPS, including easier sharing of material at early stage for CPS advice.

• Police forces must implement technical opportunities to redact material by September 2024; delivery of this must be a top priority for the Police Digital Service and the Policing Productivity team.

9. The Home Office and criminal justice partners should align success measures for CPS and policing by March 2024. This should drive a more productive partnership approach to case management of crimes going through the criminal justice service.

10. CPS and NPCC should run a pilot giving some additional charging decisions – where a guilty plea is expected - to high performing police forces.

Barriers to productivity

11. The Policing Productivity team should undertake further work to look at other ‘barriers’ to police productivity. Two important areas of focus are missing persons and how police custody operates. The Productivity Team should report back on this by March 2024.

Workforce

12. Police forces should improve the productive use of medically restricted (recuperative and adjusted) duties officers and staff. The Policing Productivity team should develop further recommendations on all restricted categories by March 2024. Chief constables will also need to look at the potential to strengthen the management of sickness and absence in their force.

13. Training needs to be considered as an investment proposition: the College of Policing (and others) should assess and clearly set out the expected outputs and outcomes against costs (time and financial) of any new training courses or guidance.

14. NPCC and the College of Policing should build on the Strategic Assessment of Workforce to develop a future- focused sector skills plan for officers and for staff, scoping capabilities, gaps and training needs.

15. Home Office should support forces to minimise the number of officers posted in back-office or support functions or where their warranted powers are not required.

Technology as a productivity multiplier

16. To shift the dial further towards innovation in science and technology, some funding arrangements should be changed.

From April 2024, funding for science and technology innovation in policing should be ringfenced. Home Office ministers should consider pump priming innovation funding of £50m per annum for at least two years (using the STAR (Science, Technology, Analysis and Research) funding model, sharpening the focus on investment that will have the biggest impact). If successful, this investment should move to a permanent footing.

17. To derive greater productivity from technology, it needs to be easier for forces to adopt new solutions. Making these three changes will create the right enabling framework:

• The new NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee should provide an assurance function for science and technology solutions, including timely guidance on cost-benefits, ethics, productivity impact and workforce implications. The Chief Scientific Adviser and the independent Police Science Council should review the efficacy of this assurance function by the end of 2024.

• There should be a presumption that forces will adopt the solutions put forward by the NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee. Chief Constables should be asked to give due regard to the Committee’s recommendations and their response should be understood as part of HMICFRS inspections.

• The system effectiveness in achieving the adoption of recommended solutions should be reviewed by the Policing Productivity team by September 2024.

• The Home Office should provide active leadership so the legislative and regulatory framework enables implementation of technological innovation by policing. Communication with the public and stakeholders is a key part of the Home Office’s role.

18. To ensure the right talent is attracted to, and retained in policing, there should be a clear people strategy for science, technology and innovation in policing, to be tabled at the new Science and Innovation Coordination Committee by January 2024.

19. The Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser should implement structures that encourage the dynamic, coordinated and efficient exchange of ideas and collaboration between policing and industry (i.e. reducing separate force-by- force conversations), working with organisations including the Accelerated Capabilities Environment and others. The effectiveness of this should be reviewed by the Policing Productivity team in September 2024.

20. Force Management Statements should be amended to draw out the value of science and innovation to force performance. To support this, working with the new NPCC Science and Innovation Coordination Committee, HMICFRS should develop a framework that supports forces assess the capacity, capability, delivery and impact of science and technology solutions.

Model process

21. Policing should adopt good practice used elsewhere to drive productivity. The Model Process tool should be developed and deployed to all forces in England and Wales over the next 18 months. Productivity improvements should be brought together by the Policing Productivity team and reported every six months to the Home Office.

22. Given the improvements needed in the criminal justice service, the Model Process tool should be developed further by March 2024 to include timeliness and quality of case file submissions.

23. The Police Activity Survey (PAS) should be further enhanced by:

• Scoping the potential of technology to make it easier for officers to complete,

• Increasing the frequency of the survey to every six months,

• Take up by all forces as soon as possible.

Endowment fund

24. The Policing Productivity team should develop an investment bid for the Spending Review towards the creation of a Policing Endowment Fund by March 2024. The Education Endowment Fund and Youth Endowment Fund provide sound models of how this could work. The bid should outline how the Fund could enable improvements in a priority area for public confidence.

Making the case for investment in policing

25. The Review recommends that in advance of the next Spending Review, the policing sector develops, and agrees with the Home Office, a sector strategy which scopes future demand, required capabilities and sets out clear shared ambitions and commitments in terms of public benefits. This should be led by NPCC, working with the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.

26. The Review recommends that a national community safety board is set up, bringing together senior representation from the police, health, education, and local government sectors in order to better address shared strategic issues and provide a mechanism for change. The structure put in place will need to have regard to the devolution and funding arrangements in place for Wales.

Appendices

Workforce: approaches to, and impact of, operational capacity investments

The Review sent a data request to all forces (with a 95 per cent response rate from chief constables) to help us understand how forces have applied new capacity, and to start and assess the articulation between officer input and public outputs (or impact). There are four big areas in which forces have invested additional resources: neighbourhood, response, investigation, and public protection. The Appendix below details some of the learning from the investment so far. In many instances, the full benefits have not yet trickled through, but some promising approaches have been developed by forces in proactive neighbourhood, investigation and safeguarding.

Neighbourhood policing: 2,880 new officer posts across 26 forces.

Investigation: 1,967 new officer posts across 27 forces.

Response policing: 2,831 new officer posts across 24 forces.

Public protection: 2,241 new officer posts across 29 forces (including 608 in investigation).

Neighbourhood policing

Sixty per cent of forces made substantial capacity increases in neighbourhood policing. The decision was both in response to the perception by the public and local politicians that their police had become less visible, and secondly in recognition that officers anchored at a local level increase police effectiveness because of the local intelligence they receive and the partnerships they develop. The assumption is that pro-active and problem solving interventions at neighbourhood level reduce repeat offences, recurring incidents, and therefore future demand.

Measuring impact is challenging. In measurable terms, forces count on Neighbourhood teams mostly to: reduce antisocial behaviour and reduce neighbourhood offences such as burglary, vehicle crime, as well as rural crime (15) increase public confidence and public perception of their police (10) improve victim service and satisfaction (6) and improve justice outcomes (6).

In practice, it is difficult to know what variations might be directly attributed to additional neighbourhood policing capacity when it is spread across an entire region and when other commands are also working to reduce the same offences. Progress in terms of public perception is also difficult to correlate: West Mercia Police for example reports decline in perception of visibility after they increased their Safer Neighbourhood Teams.

Different tactics used by forces can lever opposite results, yet legitimately so. Lancashire Constabulary set up team dedicated to rural crime, which focus on repeat victims, and repeat offenders and locations. This has helped drive rural crime down by 5.7 per cent in 2022/23. Leicestershire Police has also set up new rural crime teams, whose role is to increase engagement with communities. These teams visited in excess of 500 farms, which helped increased rural crime reports by 13 per cent.

There is however an argument to say that antisocial behaviour is an offence which is a primary focus of Neighbourhood teams. Indeed, amongst the forces that monitor the performance of their neighbourhood teams closely, changes in antisocial behaviour levels are often used to demonstrate impact. The City of London Police, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, Lincolnshire Police, Merseyside Police, North Wales Police and Northamptonshire Police are amongst forces that link the decrease in antisocial behaviour in their area to the capacity increases they implemented in neighbourhood policing.

Essex Police reports antisocial behaviour down 57 per cent since 2018/19 in its town centres – supported by the creation of its town centre teams. The City of London Police dedicated ward officers oversaw a 19 per cent reduction in antisocial behaviour (from pre-Covid 2019 levels) as the increased capacity helped them to widen the daily hours of visibility (8am to 11pm). The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, Lincolnshire Police and Northamptonshire Police also report drops of circa 20 per cent.

Local impact: the impact is easier to measure at the very local level. South Yorkshire Police created new teams in Doncaster and Sheffield. Dorset Police augmented coverage in Weymouth, Bournemouth and Poole. Merseyside Police created a new Knowsley neighbourhood policing team covering Kirkby: that team helped reduced antisocial behaviour by 44 per cent, residential burglary by 28 per cent, and increased arrests from an average 44/year to 200/year in its area.

National figures: estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending March 2023 showed that 34 per cent of people had experienced or witnessed some type of antisocial behaviour (this is a decrease of six per cent compared to 2019/20). The police recorded 1.0 million antisocial behaviour incidents in 2022/23 (-25 per cent compared with 2019/20 and -20 per cent compared with 2021/22).

Lessons from the investment. The creation of 2,880 posts in this area of policing is equivalent to an additional annual investment of circa £135 million. At a national level, this is a sizeable commitment, and if this amount was invested in technology, there would be robust performance management across each force. Yet, whilst all forces that have invested capacity in that field have some general expectations in terms of public benefits, one fifth do not specifically monitor the impact of that investment, another fifth only measure the throughput activities (number of engagement activities, of referrals, hours of hotspot patrols etc).

In a number of cases, because of budget pressures, forces have increased officer numbers across neighbourhood teams at the same time as they have decreased the number of PCSOs. There is a clear risk that some of the uplift bonus gets wasted if officers are used to substitute for other members of the workforce instead of adding additional muscle to it.

A number of interesting tactics have been put in place by some forces to revitalise the traditional approach to neighbourhood – notably the development of a local pro-active element. Nottinghamshire Police have set up “Reacher” teams, Suffolk Constabulary “Op Kestrel”, Dorset Police neighbourhood enforcement teams. These teams provide flexible, local resources to tackle specific complex issues by seeking sustainable resolutions to the issues faced by a community.

In seeking to establish the impact of the investment – whilst mindful of the many drivers at play – the Review looked at the performance of the forces that invested in neighbourhood policing against the HMICFRS Neighbourhood Crime dashboard. Results are similar for the past two years: forces that have added capacity to Neighbourhood policing, have had better results on burglary and vehicle crime, but fared less well on neighbourhood crimes such as theft and robbery. Forces that have invested capacity in pro-active neighbourhood teams (Dorset Police, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, Northamptonshire Police, Nottinghamshire Police and Suffolk Constabulary) are however seeing better results than all others in terms of robbery, theft and vehicle crimes, and overall neighbourhood crimes. Given the impact observed both locally, and nationally, developing pro-active capabilities and focus on sustainable local problem solving, should be an intrinsic part of neighbourhood investment.

	Forces with no added capacity in neighbourhood 2022 vs 21	Forces with no added capacity in neighbourhood March 22 to March 23	Forces that added general capacity in neighbourhood 2022 vs 21	Forces that added general capacity in neighbourhood March 22 to March 23	Forces that added pro-active capacity in neighbourhood 2022 vs 21	Forces that added pro-active capacity in neighbourhood March 22 to March 23
Total neighbourhood crime offences	+13.1%	+11.6%	+14.0%	+9.9%	+9.3%	+6.9%
Robbery and personal property offences	+11.8%	+10.3%	+14.9%	+12.5%	+9.3%	+2.4%
Theft from person	+30.3%	+18.3%	+45.1%	+26.4%	+25.2%	+12.9%
Vehicle crime	+14.7%	+15.4%	+13.4%	+11.0%	+10.6%	+11.7%
Residential burglary	+6.4%	+3.5%	+1.3%	-1.7%	+4.2%	-1.5%

Response policing

The objectives of forces in making a substantial investment in response capacity have been:

• to maintain or improve response times whilst addressing rising demand. Northumbria Police for example has experienced a 56 per cent increase in Grade 1 incidents and 87 per cent increase in Grade 2 incidents since 2019. Despite higher demand, it improved attendance times by increasing its response teams by 26 per cent (adding 355 officers).

• to improve outcomes for victims. Officers have more capacity to investigate a larger number of volume victim-based crimes, secure and preserve evidence, make best use of the “golden hour” investigative actions (maximising the chances of a positive criminal justice outcome). They also have more time to reassure and safeguard victims, follow the Victims’ Code of Practice, and doing so, securing higher victim satisfaction rates. The capacity increase in Dorset Police has helped increase completed victim needs assessments by 33 per cent and reduced the numbers of outstanding offenders.

• to offset the relatively high level of abstractions of student officers (for training) and to make-up for the current levels of inexperience (as Response teams are where many of the new officers are posted). In effect, forces need more people on these teams to deliver an equivalent level of work. Some forces have strengthened supervision and the role (and number) of sergeants in response teams, so that there is one for each shift who can support new officers with advice, checking constable workloads and standards, helping investigation quality (such as Derbyshire Constabulary, Dorset Police, South Wales Police), others have increased team numbers, so that new recruits feel better engaged and better connected (West Mercia Police).

A number of forces are reporting some good results around decreases in the numbers of outstanding suspects, of non-resourced incidents, and of response times. Kent Police’s response for “high calls” reduced from about ten minutes in February 2022 to just below nine minutes in February 2023. However not all forces can point to an improvement, in part because the capacity increase is counterbalanced by continued rises in demand, compounded by the experience and abstraction issues.

The indicators used across forces to evidence success are inconsistent and comparative response data is not published. The only published numbers in terms of response performance are the percentage of telephone calls answered within a certain time range, when arguably, in the case of a call categorised by a force as “emergency”, a critical outcome should be how quickly officers are on the scene. Across other Blue Light services, fire services measure average attendance time to an incident, as do ambulances –a measure that is more meaningful and better understood by the general public. In order for policing to better account for its substantial investment in response, the adoption and publication of response data that is meaningful and comparable with other emergency services may help increase public confidence.

Investigation

If the effectiveness of investigation work is assessed through arrests numbers and positive criminal justice outcomes, results have declined over the years. The challenge in this area is first and foremost a question of performance rather than one of productivity. Some reasons include a higher proportion of offences that are more complex to investigate (sexual offences, cyber and fraud etc), the increasing role of technology, the rising volume of data and higher digital skills required^{[footnote 124]}, as well as some of the criminal justice barriers explored elsewhere in this report. Force’s investigative capacity shortfall (“the detective gap”) has been another driver.

In response to this challenge, forces have increased capacity to address poor performance in particular against sexual offences, child abuse and offences in the public protection arena, as well as to improve overall performance on volume crime investigations. Some forces have built new capabilities, in particular to tackle fraud, cyber or County Lines. Nottinghamshire Police for example has increased its serious organised crime capability to provide resources to investigate complex crimes, from fraud and cyber to modern slavery and County Lines – acquiring capabilities in digital examination and radio frequency.

In structuring their answer to investigation – and particularly volume crimes -, forces have taken three main distinct approaches (there are also some hybrid models):

1. Omnicompetence. Investigation taken forward by the frontline officers who respond to the crimes. In this model, “omnicompetent” officers take ownership of the incidents up to their resolution. Forces, such as Leicestershire Police, who moved to this model in 2020 (and away from having separate incident response, prisoner management and investigation functions), highlight that it promotes greater individual ownership for the officer, creates a more rounded workforce, and supports knowledge development. Leicestershire Police points to an increase of crime investigated (+12 per cent) and decrease in investigation time (from 58 to 52 days) in the three years this has been in place. Positive outcomes rose slightly 0.5 per cent. Lincolnshire Police has also put in place a new operating model which incorporates response, investigation and area CID. Cumbria Constabulary’s response team investigate criminal damage, domestic abuse, hate crime, violence against women and girls (excluding the more serious offences) and volume crimes. Derbyshire Constabulary, through this local policing- led investigation model, reports increases in positive justice outcomes (for domestic abuse, robbery and burglary), but highlights the importance of regular training to assist officers get cases to court more effectively.

2. Task specialisation. A number of forces are bringing in new models whereby the investigation of PIP1 crimes is removed from response. In Sussex Police, the first Response Investigation teams went live February 2023 to improve solve rates, and the quality and timeliness of investigations (an evaluation is scheduled). Warwickshire Police created similar Patrol Investigations Units in April to provide focus on investigation. Also this year, Greater Manchester Police is splitting its response and investigation functions between a District Response Team and a District Investigation Team in charge of completing further crime investigation, processing prisoners and building prosecution files. Gwent Police is going further into task specialisation, breaking the investment journey into three component parts: initial attendance (response), investigation (Investigation Hub) and file submission (case file hub). These teams are seen as a way to raise the quality of criminal justice outcomes because the cases are progressed by teams focused on one objective, whilst response officers have more deployment and visibility time. For many of these teams it is too early to report on criminal justice outcome improvements. Dyfed- Powys Police however introduced the model in November 2021 and now has 80 full-time equivalent posts in its local investigation units, of which 26 posts have been enabled by the uplift. It reports that this has driven positive outcome rates from 11 per cent to 19 per cent (and the force progress from 37th to first in that area). Substantially less victims withdrew from the criminal justice process (Outcome 16, measuring victim withdrawal, decreased from 45 per cent to 27 per cent).

3. Crime type specialisation. Whilst forces have always separated the investigation of the most serious and complex crimes (homicides, rape, online child abuse, organised crime etc), approaches differ for the investigation of volume crimes and other victim-based offences. In terms of volume crime, Bedfordshire Police has created a specialist burglary dwelling investigation team (Op Maze) to increase the identification of burglary series and “taken into consideration” outcomes. Derbyshire Constabulary has also set up a Neighbourhood Acquisitive Crime Team so it can take a specialist approach to solving burglaries and robberies. Public protection is also a key area where many forces have used the uplift to create specialist teams or roles. Because of the recency of investments across forces, and the focus on measuring outputs rather than outcomes, the forces’ returns are inconclusive in showing what work best for public protection investigation: specialisation versus mainstreaming. Forces like Essex Police and Greater Manchester Police has put in place roles focussed on dealing with domestic abuse or adult safeguarding units across all districts, to take domestic abuse demand from wider policing functions, and, by using dedicated trained investigators, to improve the quality and timeliness of the investigations and the prisoner management. Others, like North Yorkshire Police, use their general CID capability to investigate all safeguarding offences – as they see separate functions as less effective.

Most industries and services in a given sector (whether car manufacturing or hospitals) will usually operate with similar streamlined processes honed from decades of experience, incremental improvements and rigorous evaluations of changes. The divergences and the all- too-frequent changes in operating model that take place in forces indicate that there is no consensus, nor “industry” certainty, as to what works. This is despite the investigative and criminal justice processes (for example, building a case file) being a relatively well- defined set of tasks, so in theory, ripe for a coherent streamlined and proven model that forces can apply.

At a national level, the investigative investment above costs about £92 million per annum. An equivalent investment in IT would be accompanied by a robust impact monitoring framework (with a pre- implementation baseline, quantified expected outputs, evaluation processes in place). For most forces, these elements are not in place and leaders are simply hoping to see general improvement in performance.

The expansion of the Model Process tool will assist forces identify the best performing approaches. Once the new investigative models put in place across forces have been operating for longer, the Tool might provide a good basis to evaluate the three main organisational approaches to the investigative process: omnicompetence, task specialisation, crime-type specialisation, to assess which provides the better outcomes to victims and best value.

Public protection

Police recorded domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes in England and Wales continue to rise (910,980 crimes such as violence against the person and sexual offences). However, arrests, and the number of suspects of domestic abuse-related crimes referred to the CPS for a charging decision are declining. In March 2023, police-recorded rapes and sexual offences were broadly four times higher than a decade earlier. Domestic abuse-related crimes and sexual offences recorded by the police do not provide a reliable measure of trend (CESW estimates that the trend has relatively stable in recent years). They do, however, provide a measurement of the demand on the police for these crimes. As well as demand, risk and harm levels are rising: for example, Essex Police managed 1,184 high-risk domestic abuse crimes in 2017/18, five years later, that number has tripled to 3,259.

Given this, many forces are investing additional capacity into public protection – and a very strong element is directed at tackling violence against women and girls including domestic abuse, rape and other sexual offences. The previous lack of capacity in these areas had been feeding a downward productivity helix: backlogs and bottlenecks across units impacting on the timeliness of police action, and consequently eroding victim confidence, causing their withdrawal, and ultimately leading to poor criminal justice outcomes. At the same time increasing caseloads per officer led to high staff turnover, loss of experience and lower quality of output – again impacting justice outcomes.

Most forces are not, at this stage, able to point to sustained, positive changes in criminal justice outcomes. To a large extend, forces are making a recovery investment to regain a grip on the demand flow itself. The success measures they currently use relate to flow and direct outputs such as the number of protection orders and notices, number of cases processed, length of investigation, elimination of backlogs. Forces have taken additional positive approaches to improve their service:

• Making a better use of the forces’ existing information to improve the quality of intervention. Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s Early Domestic Abuse Intervention desk sits in the control room, reviews all domestic abuse incidents, checks their grading, looks at the previous history and identifies the risks, so that the police officer who attends is immediately aware of the fuller picture and better equipped to address it at scene. This tactic has led to a better use of domestic abuse protection orders. Ways to improve response officer situational awareness, such as this one, are worth exploring across forces.

• Using technology to improve timeliness in responding to victims. Dyfed-Powys Police, Leicestershire Police and Sussex Police are amongst forces using video communication to manage low- risk non-urgent incidents. Sussex Police’s Local Resolution Team managed an average of 530 victim appointments per month in 2022, with victims surveyed saying they were highly satisfied (faster response and effective support) and more capacity created in response policing to address the higher risk demand.

• Providing people the right intervention at the right time from the right agency. Inconsistency of approach is a frequent issue in safeguarding as partners have mismatched geographical boundaries and strategic drives. Gwent Police has put in place a resource to provide a coordinated response to all age safeguarding, early intervention and prevention, whether police, local authorities, social services etc. Humberside Police has gone further, drawing from their “Right Care, Right Person” approach. They have integrated their four regional MASH (Multi-agency safeguarding hubs) into one, incorporating all four local authorities, health, education, Early Help and children’s service to bring a consistent approach (successfully tested in North Lincolnshire). The Partnership Integrated Triage this offers (“PIT stop”) supports partnership risk management, information sharing, identifies themes to direct early prevention. Evaluation shows that the performance drive and uniformity of approach enable the processing of 57 per cent more work than a comparative force (161 pieces of work per officer per month, versus 93). Backlogs have decreased drastically, and more people are receiving targeted help. This consolidated safeguarding model - bringing all partners together to ensure that safeguarding needs are addressed in a consistent and appropriate way across their area, and that all partners play their role in supporting early intervention and prevention – should be explored by other forces.

	Time savings	Equivalent in officer FTE	Comment	Recommendation
Barriers: mental ill-health	Up to 1.6 million hours freed-up	Up to 905 (1 FTE for officers = 1,768 hours)	The second snapshot estimated there were 800,000 incidents of a “non-crime no immediate threat” nature. With each incident requiring two officer hours. MH report 2. On Section 136: “a potential 800,000 hours are being spent by police officers waiting” that is also addressed by Right Care Right Person. Because of the unknown, but large, overlap with the above, it would not be robust to add this number.	Changes are being implemented + Recommendation 5
Barriers: Home Office counting rules	Up to 433,000 hours	245	Phase 1 crime recording reductions: “It will save as many as 433,000 officer hours that can be redeployed from unnecessary recording tasks, to dealing with offences or attending incidents.” There will be additional savings from Phase 2 and NISR review but these have not been quantified.	Changes have been implemented + Recommendation 6
Barriers: criminal justice (IMD)	540,000 hours	305	A review by Surrey Police found the requirement for investigators to complete the Investigation Management Document has added an average of three hours of work when completing a file. If we extrapolate this for every pre-charge file sent to CPS, this equates to 540,000 hours a year.	Recommendation 7
Barriers: criminal justice (redaction)	210,000 hours	119	Redaction will always be required for files that progress to court. However, police forces will have spent 210,000 hours redacting material for the estimated 38,274 files that do not progress beyond CPS.	Recommendation 8
Barriers: criminal justice (robotics)	About 486,471 hours	275	There are technical solutions to reducing the time spent by forces on redacting text material. About 770,000 hours are spent by investigators redacting text material annually. If digital redaction only achieved a 80 per cent saving in time efficiency (as per Bedfordshire Police evaluation), this could free up 618,000 hours of investigators’ time. If the recommendation above is in place, then this concerns only 141,416 files (taking out the NFA proportion) and the saving would be 486,471 hours.	Recommendation 8
Workforce: releasing officers from business support posts	5,103,315 hours	2,886	In 2014, there were 3,304 officers in business support roles, rising to 6,352 in 2023 (costing forces an estimated additional £101 million compared to having staff in these posts). Five forces had less than 2.56 per cent of their officers in business support posts. If all forces managed to reduce it to that level, 2,886 full- time equivalent officers would be released to the frontline. These posts would have to be replaced with police staff, so there is a cost. The calculation also assumes they are full time.	Recommendation 15
Workforce: releasing officers in control rooms to the frontline	4,269,720 hours	2,415	HMICFRS 2022 Value for Money profiles showed that 28 per cent of the workforce in central communications units (contact centres) were police officers (2,930 out of 10,304). Five forces had less than five per cent of police officers, while three forces have over 40 per cent. If all forces managed to reduce their level to five per cent (as five forces have), then 2,415 officers would be released to the frontline. This assumes they are full time.	Recommendation 15
Workforce: absence	2,044,813 hours for officers	1,179,348 hours for staff 1,156 officer equivalent and 721 staff FTE	The differences between forces suggest improvements must be possible in the lower performing forces. If they were able to decrease their sickness rate to the top quartile (i.e. circa 10th best performing force), and reduce their hours lost, this would create a national gain of 2,044,813 officer hours (1,156 full time police officers) and 1,179,348 police staff hours (721 full time police staff).	Recommendation 12
Workforce: limited duties	3,400,000 hours	1,900	The national median average rate of officers on recuperative and adjusted duties is 8.9 per cent. If forces above the median were able to reduce the proportion of recuperative and adjusted duties officers to the national average, this would return almost 1,900 police officers to full duties (3.4 million full duties hours). This should be an ambition in the less performing forces. It assumes they are full- time.	Recommendation 12
Tech and innovation	15,000,000	8,484 hours	In a recent innovation mapping exercise, forces in England and Wales reported 64 examples of science and technology driving productivity. Collectively, the examples saved 347,656 of workforce hours per annum. The Chief Scientific Advisor estimates that if the 64 examples were scaled nationally, and similar gains transpired for all forces, circa 15 million hours would be saved. The time saved will be for officers and for staff depending on the area in which the innovation takes place.	Recommendations 16 to 20
Model process	3,442,176 hours	1,947	If the pilot forces involved in trialling the Model Process moved to the most cost- efficient model for two of the crime types - antisocial behaviour and burglary dwelling - almost 500,000 officer hours (278 officers equivalent) would be freed-up. This captures a partial view of the potential as it applies to the pilot sample only, on two crime types. Extrapolating to 43 forces (for burglary and ASB only), this would free-up 1,947 officers.	Recommendations 21 to 23
Total	37,708,843 hours	21,358 (including some staff equivalent)

Policing Productivity Review: terms of reference

Issue

The Home Secretary has commissioned the study into police productivity. The required output is a report back to the Home Secretary by the end of September 2023.

Driving greater productivity in policing will deliver better outcomes for the public. The review is done against a backdrop of the police uplift programme, with 20,000 additional police officers being recruited between 2019 and 2023 but also an ever more complex and expanded policing mission. Operational independence of policing is fundamental however – as evidenced by the HMICFRS remit – there must be

room for commentary on the optimal methodology for different component parts of the police role. The review will identify ways in which forces across England and Wales can be more productive, improving outcomes.

Where urgent issues present themselves the Review team will conduct immediate and shorter-term work and produce interim reports on those specific issues. This may affect the duration of the Review. The Review will be supported by NPCC.

This will be a multi-strand piece of work and will cover a wide range of issues in relation to current police productivity and offer concrete proposals on how that productivity might be enhanced in future.

Principles

The Review will be particularly mindful of the underlying principle of Chief Constables/ Commissioners operational independence.

Scope of the review

Whilst it is necessary and desirable that the Review is flexible enough to develop thinking as it progresses through the 12 months there are key issues that the Review is required to examine specifically:

• The Review will build on existing work by NPCC to ensure that future Spending Review bids are data driven and offer clear outcomes. It will also look at options for reinvestment or cashable savings which could be considered further in future Spending reviews.
• The NHS has done significant work to understand its’ own productivity and makes substantial use of data to drive investment decisions. The Review will examine what lessons can be learned from the “model hospital” concept. This will include the development of analytical tools to enable examination of warranted and unwarranted variations in the way police processes operate.

Throughout the review the focus will be on the positive identification of good practice form within or without policing.

• This government has already committed to recruiting 20,000 extra police officers. This is considerable additional input to policing and the Review will carry out research to quantify the effect of this addition.
• The Review will also examine real or perceived barriers to improving police productivity – this will include a widening of the policing mission. The first of these will be the diversion of police resources to dealing with mental health issues.
• The Review will work with NPCC to understand where they believe regulatory procedures, including legislation, serves to impact police productivity and will make recommendations on this.
• The Review will consider and make recommendations on how technology, including robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Review will work closely with the work on the Criminal Justice System to make recommendations that will optimise police productivity as vital partners in the CJ system. It will consider the impact on police productivity of current CJ processes.

Out of scope

The themes of force structure, funding and accountability/oversight are beyond the scope of this review.

Timing

This will be a 12-month review – reporting at the end of September 2023. However – as stated above – more immediate taskings may affect this timescale.

Governance

The Home Secretary has personally commissioned the lead reviewer. These Terms of Reference will guide the lead reviewer. The lead reviewer will consult regularly with stakeholders who will offer advice.

The stakeholders will as a minimum comprise Home Office; NPCC; the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; College of Policing; HMICFRS. The Stakeholders Board will bring challenge, expertise and experience to the lead reviewer’s work.

Resources

The Home Office has made a budget available to the lead reviewer. This will be administered through the NPCC. It will be necessary to utilise external skills as well as drawing upon the demonstrable willingness of NPCC to contribute both resources and thinking to the review. A small core team has been established to drive the review.

Stakeholder engagement

The Review would like to thank the members of the Stakeholder Group for their continued support and engagement.

• Director of Strategy, Capability and Resources, Home Office

• Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council

• HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary and HM Chief Inspector of Fire & Rescue Services

• College of Policing Chief Executive Officer

• Acting Director General Independent Office for Police Conduct

• Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Chair

• Association of Police and Crime Finance Portfolio Lead

• Association of Police and Crime Performance Portfolio Lead

• Youth Endowment Fund Chief Executive Officer

• Kent Equality Cohesion Council Chief Executive Officer

The Review consulted with a wide range of organisations and individuals; and is grateful for input and insight. These have included:

• Association of Ambulance Chief Executives

• Association of Police and Crime Commissioners

• Avon and Somerset Police

• AWS (Amazon Web Services)

• Bedfordshire Police

• Bluelight Commercial

• British Transport Police

• BusinessLDN

• Cambridge Centre for Evidence Based Policing

• Cambridgeshire Constabulary

• Cheshire Constabulary

• Chief constables

• City of London Police

• Civil Nuclear Constabulary

• Cleveland Police

• College of Policing

• Counter Terrorism Policing

• Crime Prosecution Service

• CT Policing Network

• Cumbria Constabulary

• Department of Health and Social Care

• Derbyshire Constabulary

• Devon and Cornwall Police

• Dorset Police

• Durham Constabulary

• Dyfed-Powys Police

• Education Endowment Fund

• Essex Police

• Former Members of the independent report for the Department of Health by Lord Carter of Coles

• Gloucestershire Constabulary

• Greater Manchester Police

• Gwent Police

• Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary

• Health Care Practitioner’s Council

• Hertfordshire Constabulary

• His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services

• His Majesty’s Treasury

• Home Affairs Select Committee Chair

• Home Office

• Humberside Police

• Independent Office for Police Conduct

• Kent Police

• Lancashire Constabulary

• Lancashire University

• Leicestershire Police

• Lincolnshire Police

• McKinsey and Company

• Merseyside Police

• Metropolitan Police Service

• Ministry of Defence

• N8 Research Partnership

• National County Lines Coordination Centre

• National Crime Agency

• National Health Service (Mental Health)

• National Health Service (Model Hospital)

• National Leads

• National Police Chiefs Council

• Nesta

• Netherlands Police

• New York Police Department

• New Zealand Police

• NHS Improvement

• No.10 Delivery Unit

• Norfolk Constabulary

• North Wales Police

• North Yorkshire Police

• Northamptonshire Police

• Northumbria Police

• Nottinghamshire Police

• Office for National Statistics

• Operation Soteria

• Police and Crime Commissioners

• Police Digital Service

• Police Federation

• Police Foundation

• Police Scotland

• Police Service of Northern Ireland

• PricewaterhouseCoopers

• Public Value Framework Regional Leads

• Serious and Organised Crime

• Single Online Home

• South Wales Police

• South Yorkshire Police

• Staffordshire Police

• Suffolk Constabulary

• Superintendents Association

• Surrey Police

• Sussex Police

• Thames Valley Police

• Tony Blair Institute

• Unison

• University College London

• Warwickshire Police

• Welsh Assembly

• West Mercia Police

• West Midlands Police

• West Yorkshire Police

• Wiltshire Police

• Youth Endowment Fund

1. Home Office, 2022 ↩

2. “A reduction in crime could stem from the number of police officers, but it could also stem from a multitude of other sources. These could include reduced inequalities, higher life satisfaction, better mental health services, or the implementation of social activities and programmes within the local community.” A guide to quality adjustment in public service productivity measures - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ↩

3. Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ↩

4. State of Policing 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

5. “including missing persons, schools work, lost property and stray dogs, noise nuisance, responses to alarms, public/ sporting event stewarding, gaming, betting and licensing, court summons, warrants and other administrative duties, court security and immigration and other escorts” As reported by Andrew Millie et al in the policing task and the expansion (and contraction) of British policing (2012) ↩

6. Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ↩

7. The Baroness Casey Review - Metropolitan Police ↩

8. Myhill, A., & Beak, K. (2008). Public confidence in the police. Research, Analysis and Information. National Police Improvement Agency–NPIA ↩

9. Robinson, A., & Tilley, N. (2009). Factors influencing police performance in the investigation of volume crimes in England and Wales. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 10(3), 209-223 ↩

10. Such as a previous Police Service of Northern Ireland exercise: Demo - NIPB & PSNI Prioritisation Simulator (prioritysimulator.com) ↩

11. The Review conducted a useful session in September 2023 with the Metropolitan Police Service, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Staffordshire Police, Gwent Police, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and HM Treasury to explore the use of the Public Value Framework to how police forces engage with the public and victims. ↩

12. 40526851.pdf (oecd.org) ↩

13. TG_public_sector_productivity.aspx (mckinsey.com) ↩

14. Peelian principles - Wikipedia ↩

15. For example, the NPCC highlights that “since 2016/17, the number of offenders charged and brought to justice has fallen by 46%, while police recorded crime has increased by approximately 23% (as at December 2022)” July 2023 Ministerial Roundtable ‘State of the criminal justice service’ a Policing Perspective NPCC Criminal Justice Co-ordination Committee. ↩

16. Bart van Ark and Joel Hoskins (Probing policing productivity: a literature review), commissioned by the Review. ↩

17. Arrests is often as a proxy for measuring productivity, as criminal apprehensions often are perceived as the primary means for controlling local criminal incidents. In addition, Zhao argues (Can additional resources lead to higher levels of productivity (arrests) in police agencies? JS Zhao: Criminal Justice Review Vol 36 Numb 2, 2011, pp 165-182) that “police work is by its very nature labour intensive. Personnel costs account for approximately 85 to 90 per cent of a police department operating budget in any US agency” and within this, “the apprehension of criminal offenders is one of the most labour-intensive activities initiated in the policing environment”. ↩

18. Essentially, the core argument put forward by the 1990 Operational Policing Review that “in order to demonstrate increased productivity and to show that value for money is being achieved, attention has had to focus upon measurable aspects of police work. In doing so, the unquantifiable functions of policing that characterise the (British) style of policing (underpinning public consent) are often excluded from the equation”. ↩

19. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

20. Policing Vision 2030 (npcc.police.uk) ↩

21. Sherman, L., Neyroud, P.W. and Neyroud, E., 2016. The Cambridge crime harm index: Measuring total harm from crime based on sentencing guidelines. Policing: a journal of policy and practice, 10(3), pp.171-183. ↩

22. Chaired by Roger Birch, CC Sussex Police (commissioned by ACPO, Police Federation, Supers’ Assoc.) ↩

23. RIU prog rpt 01 (regulation.org.uk) ↩

24. Flanagan review of policing - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

25. Mental Health Demand on Policing (November 2022) The Policing Productivity Review ↩

26. Mental Health Demand on Policing (November 2022) The Policing Productivity Review ↩

27. Mental Health Demand on Policing (February 2023). The Policing Productivity Review said “For the November 2022 report, 41 police forces told us that they record a total of approximately 16 million incidents a year. If one extrapolated the second snapshot data from the sample forces on that day, it could mean about 800,000 incidents of a “non-crime no immediate threat” nature or very roughly £46 million of police officer time”. Data from the second sprint showed police spent an average of two officer hours at a non-crime no immediate threat mental health incident. ↩

28. Mental Health Demand on Policing (February 2023) ↩

29. Police response to missing incidents from healthcare settings: an exploratory analysis Solymosi, Bambridge and Sidebottom (2021) ↩

30. The multi-agency response for adults missing from health and care settings: A national framework for England - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

31. Agreement to support mental health care and free up police time - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

32. The Policing Productivity Review, Home Office Counting Rules: Phase One, March 2023 ↩

33. Operation Soteria – Transforming the Investigation of Rape (npcc.police.uk) ↩

34. State of Policing 2021 (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) and Home Office to scrap 101 non-emergency number charges - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

35. Review of command and control logs in Kent Police, September 2023 ↩

36. 1,694,267 incidents and records of contact split into 721,384 incidents and 972,883 records of contact. ↩

37. Threat, Harm, Risk, Investigation, Vulnerability and Engagement. THRIVE is an assessment methodology on how best to respond to 999 and 101 calls. This model is used across a number of forces nationally. ↩

38. Crime outcomes in England and Wales 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

39. July Ministerial Roundtable ‘State of the criminal justice service’ a Policing Perspective NPCC Criminal Justice Co-ordination Committee ↩

40. State of Policing: The Annual Assessment of Policing in England and Wales 2022 (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

41. Durham Constabulary 23 hours (sampling 14 files), Kent Police 21 hours (survey), Leicestershire Police 7.3 hours (sampling 42 files), Merseyside Police 4.8 hours (sampling 30 files) ↩

42. National Disclosure Revisions Impact Assessment, Surrey Police, 2021 ↩

43. 180,000 pre-charge files for CPS in 2022/23 = 540,000 hours. ↩

44. based on 2019/20 charge rate of 74.8% ↩

45. Director’s Guidance on Charging and Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure – The effect on policing. 27/10/2021 ACC Tim De Meyer NPCC Disclosure Lead. ↩

46. CPS JOIM data shows CPS considered 201,253 defendant decisions in 2022/23. The Review conducted a sample review of 200 files, which showed an average of 1.12 defendants per file. Extrapolated to the 201,000 defendant decisions, this would equate to 179,690 files. The “no further action” rate in 2022/23 has now decreased to 21.3%. This means that 38,274 files did not progress to charge. ↩

47. Improving Policing Efficiency Project Redaction savings exercise: NPCC Disclosure Portfolio. Sampling 80 files from 2020 and 99 files from 2023 from five forces: Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Leicestershire Police, Surrey Police, Metropolitan Police Service and Thames Valley Police – covering both complex and non-complex crimes. ↩

48. Relevant material that police have gathered during an investigation but which will not be used as part of the prosecution’s case against the defendant. ↩

49. Review of case files 24/06/2021 Thames Valley Police ↩

50. In Scotland, Police Scotland’s Criminal Justice Services Division told the Review that “redaction to cases is done by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. The police do not have input into this.” ↩

51. Using NPCC’s estimated 129 pages per files, at two minutes per page, extrapolated to 179,690 pre-charge casefiles ↩

52. srpew_final_report.pdf (policingreview.org.uk) ↩

53. Microsoft Word - WheatcroftJM_WagstaffGF_Manarinb_IJHSS_Final2015.docx (core.ac.uk) ↩

54. Reducing the backlog in criminal courts (nao.org.uk) ↩

55. Microsoft Word - WheatcroftJM_WagstaffGF_Manarinb_IJHSS_Final2015.docx (core.ac.uk) ↩

56. srpew_final_report.pdf (policingreview.org.uk) ↩

57. In 2022/23, 40.7% of files were not accepted at first triage by the CPS (Source: JOIM dashboard) ↩

58. Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23 - The Crown Prosecution Service (cps.gov.uk) ↩

59. HMCTS management information - July 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

60. Criminal court statistics quarterly: January to March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

61. UKMPU Statistical Report 2021-2022 (1).pdf ↩

62. srpew_final_report.pdf (policingreview.org.uk) “Similarly missing persons calls are a regular occurrence. Almost half of all young people in care go missing at least once and for some it is much more common. Of course, it is important to track down missing persons but it is striking that the police spend three million investigation hours per year on these cases. That is the equivalent of 1,562 full time officers, all day, every day; incredibly that is more police officer time than we currently allocate to police the whole of North Yorkshire.” ↩

63. CIPFA data, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services ↩

64. Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) (officers, staff, police community support officers and designated officers) ↩

65. The HMICFRS Chief Inspector has expressed similar concerns that this has resulted in “officers performing tasks that can and should be carried out by police staff… something referred to as reverse civilianisation.” State of Policing: The Annual Assessment of Policing in England and Wales 2022 - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

66. Gross costs for a PC with three-year experience is £52,548 including national insurance and pension (Source: Polfed). A mid-grade staff or a Police Community Support Officer might be – depending on regions – about £36,505. ↩

67. Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

68. Home Office police workforce data ↩

69. College of Policing 2020; Huey et al, 2019 reported in srpew_final_report.pdf (policingreview.org.uk) ↩

70. Devon and Cornwall Police, Essex Police, Kent Police and Metropolitan Police Service feedback on refresher training ↩

71. An inspection of how well the police tackle serious youth violence - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

72. An inspection of how effective police forces are in the deployment of firearms - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

73. Race and policing: An inspection of race disparity in police criminal justice decision-making - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk) ↩

74. Behavioural Insights Toolkit (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

75. Benefits and support - Special constables (volunteer police officers) - Metropolitan Police ↩

76. How the National Graduate Leadership Programme works - POLICE NOW ↩

77. £190 million on Initial Police Learning & Development Programme, £80 million on operational support training and £168 million on other training (excluding armed response training) ↩

78. Domestic-Abuse-Matters-v2-2017.pdf (college.police.uk) ↩

79. Plans for statistical reporting on progress with the recruitment of an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

80. The data on hours lost is not considered robust enough by the Home Office to publish. ↩

81. For example, for the forces that did report numbers, there are wide variations in the proportions of officers in the “recuperative duties” category – from 0.6% to 14%. This would suggest that they may be using different ways to measure or categorise these officers. ↩

82. Strategic Assessment of Workforce 2022/23, NPCC, November 2022 ↩

83. Home Office annual workforce return Police forces did not report to the Home Office on the number of officers who were subject to management restrictions (due to an ongoing investigation) in 2023. ↩

84. Home Office additional data on workforce short-term sickness ↩

85. In 2021/22: 11,076,865 and 6,997,882 respectively, and in 2022/23 11,087,425 and 6,715,258 respectively. Two forces did not provide officer hours lost and one did not provide staff hours lost. ↩

86. Sickness absence in the UK labour market - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) ↩

87. Home Office annual data return ↩

88. This appears to run contrary to any narrative that the physical nature of frontline policing carries a heightened risk of injury, accepting that detention officers and Police Community Support Officers may find themselves in confrontational situations, and those in contact centres may also be exposed to trauma. ↩

89. Home Office Annual Data Return on hours lost, and using the Home Office calculation of the number of working hours formula: b = f (h) 52 where: b is the total number of contracted hours; h is the full-time hours per week (e.g. 40 hours for officers and 37 for staff); 52 is the number of weeks in the year; and f is a correction factor to account for annual leave, public holidays, maternity/paternity leave and suspension. The value of f should be taken as 0.85 for both officers and staff. This means full time officers work 1,768 hours a year and full-time police staff work 1,635.4 hours a year. ↩

90. Crime in England and Wales: Quarterly data tables - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) 602,940 burglaries were recorded between 1 Jan 2021 and 31 March 2023. Research by Kent Police shows police officers spend 1.6 hours on average conducting initial attendance at a burglary. ↩

91. common-goal-for-wellbeing-version-3.pdf (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

92. Deloitte Mental health and employers: refreshing the case for investment January 2020: “We find that on average employers obtain a return of £5 for every £1 invested…however, there is a wide spread of returns from 0.4:1 to 11:1”. ↩

93. For example, the Police Traumatic Events Checklist, a trauma management tool to assess trauma exposure in UK policing. Applications within forces have suggested that better data can support an immediate and long-term impact on productivity. Three case studies have already shown that PTEC has improved approaches to decision making for resource allocation, individual performance reviews, and the efficacy of supervisions and referrals to trauma management processes. Further work implementing PTEC in force control rooms and into supervision of Response Officers is being undertaken 2023- 2024, in collaboration with the National Wellbeing Service and Oscar Kilo, collecting additional impact data to demonstrate the productivity efficiencies that reliable trauma management can bring to forces. ↩

94. Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The 2023 data does not include the numbers of police officers who have been place under “management restrictions” (for example, due to an ongoing professional standards investigation) which prevents them from undertaking full duties, but these numbers are rising as forces work to improve standards, behaviour and culture across their organisations. ↩

95. Recuperative duty: duties falling short of full deployment, undertaken by a police officer following an injury, accident, illness or medical incident, during which the officer adapts to and prepares for a return to full duties and the full hours for which they are paid. ↩

96. Adjusted duty: Duties falling short of full deployment, in respect of which workplace adjustments (including reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010) have been made to overcome barriers to working. For an officer to be placed on adjusted duties, they must be attending work on a regular basis and be working for the full number of hours for which they are paid (in either a full time or part time substantive role). ↩

97. Strategic Assessment of the Workforce 2022, NPCC ↩

98. Annual Data Return workforce published data and using the Home Office calculation of the number of working hours formula: b = f (h) 52 where: b is the total number of contracted hours; h is the full-time hours per week (e.g. 40 hours for officers and 37 for staff); 52 is the number of weeks in the year; and f is a correction factor to account for annual leave, public holidays, maternity/paternity leave and suspension. The value of f should be taken as 0.85 for both officers and staff. This means full time officers work 1,768 hours a year. ↩

99. circa 42 officers on recuperative duties or adjusted duties ↩

100. The constabulary estimates that 17% of incidents are managed by the team from beginning to end without the need to deploy officers. ↩

101. North Yorkshire Police’s Initial Enquiry Team of 40 officers can deal with 21,000 incidents per year, up to the point of being able to pass on an investigative package to patrol officers to conduct an arrest. ↩

102. 6 September 2022: National Law Enforcement Data Programme (NLEDP) accounting officer assessment - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

103. The UK Science and Technology Framework: taking a systems approach to UK science and technology (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

104. Managing Your Innovation Portfolio (hbr.org) ↩

105. Kirby, S. (2023). The use of economic costs in crime prevention initiatives. Internal report ↩

106. contact-and-confidence.pdf (police-foundation.org.uk) ↩

107. ‘Operational productivity and performance in English NHS acute hospitals: Unwarranted variations’, Lord Carter of Coles, 2016 ↩

108. Nudge Theory is a concept that proposes making changes to the context in which people make decisions (choice architecture) to influence those decisions constructively. The person being ‘nudged’ should have a have a longer, healthier, or happier life (as judged by themselves) because of responding to the nudge. ‘Nudging’ contrasts with other ways to achieve such outcomes such as education, legislation, or enforcement. ↩

109. Cocooning typically refers to the practice of officers or Police Community Support Officers making contact with victims of burglary and residents in close geographic proximity. This contact has traditionally been face-to-face albeit can involve letter / leaflet drops. ↩

110. Property marking involves the use of UV pens or more recently, ‘traceable liquids’ being applied to items of property. ↩

111. The Police Digital Service has developed a national Digital Fingerprint Capability. This secure, cloud-based platform supports compliance with the Forensic Science Regulator’s (FSR) codes of practice. At an annual cost of £2.4 million it provides £6.5 million in annual savings by helping address the consistency and backlog challenges and ‘pain points’ of the fingerprinting processes in a fragmented landscape of 25 separate entities (ranging from small to large force and forensic collaborations). Supporting the end-to-end processing of fingerprints, it also helps improve detection rate and crime outcomes. ↩

112. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

113. Fundamental review of the College of Policing ↩

114. Fundamental review of the College of Policing ↩

115. Education Endowment Foundation - EEF ↩

116. Spending reviews: a more powerful approach to ensuring value in public finances by Rima Assi, Jonathan Dimson, Andrew Goodman and Jens Riis Andersen, 2019 ↩

117. Spending Review 2010 (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

118. 6 September 2022: Police Uplift Programme accounting officer assessment - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

119. Martin Hewitt, NPCC ↩

120. Kate Appleby, National Crime Agency, and Ashley Auger, British Transport Police ↩

121. Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2018 (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

122. HC 14 – Central Government Supply Estimates 2020-21 Main Supply Estimates 2021-22 for the year ending 31 March 2022 (publishing.service.gov.uk) ↩

123. West Mercia Police Deputy Chief Constable ↩

124. For example, Gloucestershire Constabulary’s Project Odyssey enables specially trained police officers supported by forensic experts, to extract criminal evidence from mobile devices within a set-time period. It is used in incidents involving victims and witnesses of domestic abuse and sexual offences who may have evidence of the offence on their mobile devices. Less devices are now submitted to the central unit, as more are being analysed locally, meaning victims are not left without their mobile devices. Gloucestershire Constabulary report quicker arrests leading to more charges and convictions with use of this technology, whilst a victim experience survey evidenced satisfaction with the technology and process. ↩