The police will have to attend serious crime scenes within 15 minutes as part of an £18billion shake-up aimed at putting more officers back on the streets.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is set to unveil what she is calling the most sweeping overhaul of policing in the service’s 200-year history on Monday with strict targets on response times.
Under the reforms, police forces in England and Wales will have to respond to serious 999 calls within 15 minutes in cities and 20 minutes in rural areas. In addition, they will be expected to answer 999 calls within ten seconds.
At present, response data is patchy and inconsistent, allowing some forces to take far longer than others without consequences.
Under the new system, police failing to deliver can expect intervention from the Home Secretary, who will dispatch experts from top-performing forces to improve their operations. Ms Mahmood said: ‘Everyday crimes are on the rise across the country and too often there seem to be no consequences.
‘People are reporting crimes and then waiting hours or even days for a response. By the time the police arrive, the perpetrators and witnesses are long gone.
‘I will restore neighbourhood policing and scale up patrols in communities to catch criminals and cut crime.’
It comes amid what ministers describe as an ‘epidemic’ of everyday offending blighting local communities – with shoplifting soaring by 72 per cent since 2010 and street theft up by 58 per cent.
The police will have to attend serious crime scenes within 15 minutes as part of an £18billion shake-up aimed at putting more officers back on the streets
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is set to unveil what she is calling the most sweeping overhaul of policing in the service’s 200-year history on Monday with strict targets on response times
Decades of ballooning paperwork, outdated IT systems and the Officer Maintenance Grant – which requires forces to protect headcount at all costs – has meant thousands of uniformed officers are confined to back office roles.
The Government said it will slash the red tape bogging down the police to put more officers back on the streets. It will also scrap the Officer Maintenance Grant, giving forces the freedom to move some 12,600 trained officers now working in support roles back to frontline duties.
To overhaul the admin system, the government plans to cut paperwork with work underway to reduce the unnecessary recording of non-crime incidents. Ms Mahmood is expected to outline the reforms in a white paper titled ‘From local to national: a new model for policing’.
Alongside these reforms, police forces will receive £18.4 billion to restore neighbourhood policing, cut crime and catch criminals.
Welcoming the move, John Hayward-Cripps, chief executive of Neighbourhood Watch, said: ‘It’s a very basic expectation that police will respond when you report a crime, and quickly when it is serious… the Government introducing national standards and, crucially, the resource required to meet them is a welcome step forward.’
