Police chiefs and PCCs set out a vision for policing in 2025

Policing Vision 2025 sets out the future for policing over the next ten years and will shape decisions about how police forces use their resources to keep people safe.   It has been developed by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) in consultation with the College of Policing, National Crime Agency, staff associations and other policing and community partners. All chief constables and PCCs have signed up to the Vision. 

The five priorities for reform are:

• Local policing remains the bedrock of British policing but with far more integration with health, education, social services and community projects to intervene early to resolve the problems that cause crime and anti-social behaviour, reducing demand on policing and other public services. The ambition is for more multi-agency teams or hubs, which will pool funds rather than addressing problems in silos.
• Specialist capabilities, like armed policing, surveillance and major investigations, will be delivered through a network; making them more affordable with surplus costs available to reinvest in other priorities.
• Police officers will be trained and equipped to respond to the dramatic rise in criminals taking advantage of the internet. The processes for sharing evidence will become completely digital saving significant resources and the public will have the option of contacting the police and reporting crime quickly and easily online.
• The College of Policing will work with forces to give our workforce the skills and powers they need to meet these challenging requirements. There will be a focus on making policing more representative of its communities and finding a better balance between personal accountability and a bureaucratic fear of making mistakes.
• Business support functions like IT and human resources will be consolidated in cross-force units or integrated with local authorities and emergency services with more shared procurement to reduce costs.

Comment

This is a short document worth reading.

I noted two areas that particularly interested me.

Under ‘Local policing’ the report says that one of the methods that will be used to meet their 2025 challenges is: “Ensuring policing is increasingly focused on proactive preventative activity as opposed to reacting to crime once it has occurred.” Interesting. 

Under ‘Digital policing’ the report acknowledges that online crime has grown dramatically and talks about what they intend to do to counteract it, but says little or nothing about the positive assistance that the public can obtain from the internet in terms of crime prevention. There are lots of extremely helpful websites out there offering practical advice and this site links to many of them from the Library. I might add that most of them are available at no cost to the police or government.

Read the full report: http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/police-chiefs-and-pccs-set-out-a-vision-for-policing-in-2025