Neighbourhood policing statistics have been corrected today due to inaccuracies in the previous government's police workforce data.
The government has today published corrected neighbourhood policing numbers due to inaccuracies in the previous government's police workforce statistics.
The issues were uncovered as part of a data validation exercise commissioned by the Home Secretary and carried out by the NPCC to establish an accurate picture of the number of officers serving in neighbourhood roles. It follows long-standing concerns from both the Home Office and police forces about the accuracy of previously published workforce figures for neighbourhood policing.
Whilst this does not mean that the overall police numbers were incorrect, it demonstrates that the real number of neighbourhood police officers working in our communities has been artificially inflated in recent years. The government is clear that the public - who have seen and felt the reduction in neighbourhood officers and PCSOs on their streets in recent years - deserve far better than this.
It comes as the government is introducing the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, to ensure that everyone has a named contactable police officer.
As part of the data validation exercise, all police forces were asked to verify the previously published workforce data published under the "neighbourhood policing" category for March 2024. The work revealed substantial discrepancies between the previously published data and the updated figures being provided by forces which more accurately reflect the reality on the ground. Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 29 advised that their published combined neighbourhood officer and PCSO numbers should be revised down, whilst four forces revised their figures upwards. This resulted in an overall downwards revision of 2,611 compared to the figures published last year.
Forces have cited several reasons for revisions to their March 2024 data which have now been thoroughly tested by the Home Office with individual forces. Some forces say they made human resources (HR) errors after restructuring their neighbourhood policing model or relied on outdated HR systems. Others incorrectly categorised student officers in neighbourhood policing as default, despite them still being in the classroom and not out on our streets, fully trained. Errors also occurred through the incorrect categorisation of officers who perform roles that span multiple functions as in some cases, officers were recorded as working in neighbourhood policing roles when in reality they covered multiple duties, such as incident response. This blurring of the lines between officer duties did not accurately reflect the real number of dedicated neighbourhood officers patrolling our streets.
It is vital for both the government and police forces that they have a clear and accurate understanding of the state of neighbourhood policing in our communities.
The Home Office has now issued new instructions and guidance directly to forces on the categorisation of neighbourhood policing to ensure that we are recording them correctly, particularly on the distinction between response officers and neighbourhood police officers, and how to categorise classroom-based student officers. This means that systems are now in place to prevent these errors from happening in the future and to ensure that the data can be relied on going forward. The department will now require robust neighbourhood policing data returns from individual forces on a monthly basis to track the neighbourhood policing workforce more closely. This will be aligned with a strong performance framework harnessing national data to monitor performance and direct improvements in order to raise standards across the service.
The government's flagship Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will put police back on the beat with 13,000 additional police officers and PCSOs in neighbourhood roles in communities across the country. Each neighbourhood will have a named, contactable officer to tackle the issues facing their communities, and there will be guaranteed, intelligence-led patrols in town centres and high streets, with new powers to tackle the criminality and anti-social behaviour plaguing our streets.
Due to the quick work by forces to rectify the statistical errors, the numbers published today are provisional and will be confirmed in an official statistical release in the usual way.
The Home Secretary has today written to the Home Affairs Select Committee to set out this information in more detail.
