The largest reforms to policing since forces were professionalised 2 centuries ago have been announced by the British Home Secretary. A white paper titled ‘From local to national: a new model for policing’, outlines a radical blueprint for reform, so local forces protect their community and national policing protects everyone.
The government will launch a review into dramatically reducing the number of police forces in England and Wales. It is intended that the consolidation of the current model will make the police more cost-efficient, giving the taxpayer more value for money, while also ensuring a less fragmented system that will better serve the public and make them safer.
This is a moment to reset policing’s focus and return to its core principles – restoring neighbourhood policing and tackling local crime by delivering a structural overhaul to meet the demands of the modern world.
Among the reforms, a new nationwide police force will be established to fight the most complex and serious crimes, and ministers will be handed new powers to intervene directly in failing forces, sending in specialist teams to turn them around so they fight crime more effectively. In addition, a new senior policing role will be introduced to lead the police’s nationwide response to public disorder, and galvanise and co-ordinate responses to major incidents.
Under the new reforms, response officers will be expected to reach the scene of the most serious incidents within 15 minutes in cities and 20 minutes in rural areas, and forces will be expected to answer 999 phone calls within 10 seconds.
The government is making the largest investment into state-of-the-art police technology in history, with over £140 million to be invested to roll out technologies to catch more criminals and keep communities safe.
The number of live facial recognition vans will increase five-fold, with 50 vans available to every police force in England and Wales to catch violent and sexual offenders. The government will also roll out new artificial intelligence (AI) tools which will help forces identify suspects from CCTV, doorbell and mobile phone footage that has been submitted as evidence by the public.
A new national centre on AI – Police.AI – will be set up to roll out AI to all forces to free officers from paperwork, delivering up to 6 million hours back to the frontline every year – the equivalent of 3,000 police officers. This means more police on the streets fighting crime and catching criminals. More tech specialists will work in police forces to outsmart modern criminals and put more fraudsters and organised crime bosses behind bars.
It is expected that the move will enable police forces to uncover more vital hidden evidence on phones and laptops to secure more convictions of professional criminals and keep people safer from crimes such as child sexual abuse. Experts in cyber security and technology are also being encouraged to join the Special Constabulary, as police forces across England and Wales ramp up their efforts to tackle modern crime.
