Minister for Police (): Today the government has
published our response to the independent Policing Productivity
Review.
Improving productivity across the public sector is a priority for
this Government. Increasing the productivity of policing means
ensuring our police officers are able to do their jobs
effectively and stripping away the unnecessary barriers they
face. This will free up police time so that officers are able to
concentrate on frontline work, protecting the public, detecting
crime, and catching criminals. This will make the public safer
and allow them to feel safe, increasing confidence in policing,
another priority for this Government.
In August 2022, the Home Office commissioned the National Police
Chiefs' Council (NPCC) to conduct an independent review of
productivity in policing, providing clear, practical, and
deliverable recommendations to improve efficiency and
effectiveness across the functions of policing. The Review was
published(opens in a new
tab) on 20 November 2023 and identified many opportunities
for policing to improve productivity, with the potential to save
38 million hours of police officer time every year. That would be
the equivalent of another 20,000 officers on our streets.
Our response sets out the Government's support for the Review and
its recommendations. We have already announced investment of over
£230m at the Spring Budget to drive productivity and performance
improvements across policing. This will include additional
investment into technology and innovation measures such as facial
recognition, using drones as first responders, redaction, rapid
video response, automated triage of 101 calls, knife detection,
and robotic process automation.
The Government will create a new Centre for Police Productivity,
based in the College of Policing. This will be established from
Autumn 2024 and set the foundations necessary for policing to
deliver the 38 million police officer hours identified by the
independent review.
The Government is confident that policing will rise to the
challenge of meeting the ambitions of the review's
recommendations. Our response outlines how we will support them
in doing so.
A copy of the response to the Policing Productivity Review will
be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and is available at
GOV.UK.
