"The bottom line is this: every reasonable line of inquiry into every crime should always, not sometimes, be followed up."
Safe, secure communities are the foundation of a prosperous society. When people feel protected, businesses invest, families put down roots, and public trust in institutions grows. Yet across the country, crime is rising, response times are slipping, and too many criminals operate with impunity.
Policing in Britain was founded on a simple yet radical idea: that the police serve the people, not the state. Sir Robert Peel’s vision of a professional, accountable police force transformed law
enforcement into a trusted institution that protected communities by consent.
But today, that vision is faltering. Police performance is at an all-time low, with fewer than seven in a hundred crimes leading to a charge or summons, down from 17 out of 100 in 2015. Sexual offences and criminal damage are the least solved crimes, and here as well the situation is getting worse rather than better. Just 5% of sexual offences resulted in a charge or summons in 2023-24, down from 19% in 2015.
British policing operates on a ‘policing by consent model,’ but more than half the country (52%) say they have ‘little to no confidence’ in the police to carry out their most fundamental duty: to tackle crime. People are so disheartened by the police that too many have stopped reporting crime
altogether. Over a third of people said that they would not report a crime because they felt that the police would do nothing about it.
Behind the scenes of dwindling police performance are forces that are in a crisis on three fronts: people, purpose, and poor technology.
A crisis of people: Forces are stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of poor recruitment and retention. Despite the target-exceeding success of the Policing Uplift programme, the average force across England and Wales experienced a 7% decline in police per capita since 2010.
Policing used to be a career for life, but now officers are resigning in droves. Forces are being hollowed out from the top and the bottom, with new recruits and experienced officers resigning at the same rate. An environment of poor morale is driving officer resignations, with 87% of officers reporting either low or very low morale in their forces. The workforce is stretched thin, nearly two-thirds (64%) of officers reported having their rest days cancelled and their annual leave requests denied.
A crisis of purpose: The police’s ability to fulfil its primary goal to tackle crime has become compromised by escalating pressures to respond to mental health cases. Police involvement in mental health calls have surged in recent years. In some forces, the number of requests to deal with mental health calls more than tripled between 2019-21: Suffolk Constabulary saw an increase of 342%, Norfolk 260% and Northamptonshire 90%.
But majority (80%) of policing time spent on mental health calls require no police involvement as they are ‘non-crime no threat’ cases. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act means the police spend a large share of their time simply waiting with mental health patients till they are tended to by a medical professional. Annually, police spend an estimated 800,000 hours waiting with mental health patients – time that could instead address the 400,000 domestic abuse incidents, 1.3 million antisocial behaviour reports, or 500,000 burglaries that police are called to each year.
A crisis of poor technology: Some key pieces of policing infrastructure remain in urgent need of replacement.
The path to replacing two vital pieces of policing technology: the Police National Computer (PNC), which first went live in 1974, and the Police National Database (PND), has been riddled with planning and bureaucratic hurdles. The programme to replace both was meant to be delivered by 2020, but by the end of 2021, poor implementation and planning meant that the replacement had not been delivered and costs had escalated by 68% (from £671 million to £1.1 billion).
The Home Office has now abandoned these plans in favour of only replacing the PNC by the end of 2025. This target is only three months before technical support for the PNC is due to stop, leaving vast amounts of criminal data at risk of being lost altogether. The Public Accounts Committee has said it is “sceptical” that the 2025 delivery target will be met.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philip said: “Confidence is hard-won and easily lost. If we fail to act, we risk further decline. But if we get this right, we can create a police force that is respected both by those who serve in it and by those it serves. That is the challenge ahead. It is one we must meet.”
Shivani H Menon, Deputy Head of Research at Onward said: “People are losing trust in the police, both in the community and within the forces. The public are frustrated with the lack of action on shoplifting and antisocial behavior, while officers are quitting in droves. The police need better leadership and more effective management to rebuild trust and hold everyone to higher standards.”
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