A new model for policing

Genuine change will need to be delivered against ambition. Transformation will not only be theoretical, structural and of working practices; the introduction of the AI revolution, mechanical learning and robotic process automation, will be central to the strategy.

County forces will require assistance in managing such an upheaval, from grassroots interactions to major crime investigations, from roads policing to missing persons, through to shoplifting, VAWG, drugs, ASB, operational strategies and random acts of violence, which daily, are all ever present.

The question remains to be addressed: in its guise as the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, can the Safer Streets mission be delivered? Police, public, politicians, commerce, industry, academia, business all want it to succeed, but the country faces a dilemma of confidence and trust.

There is disquiet, a palpable need for change. The issue is systemic, it is compounded by the enormity of the challenges, and the struggle is causing contempt for authority. Ignorance is increased by desperation, as respect is by distain, compliance by disregard. Adherence to laws, protocol and common decency are superseded by an apparent inevitable impunity from consequence.

The government’s, Local to National White Paper on policing ephemerally lays out its ambition, it may be too early to describe it as timelined because measured change on the scale of the lifetime of parliaments is at most abstract.

In respect to the office of the Home Secretary; quoting her introduction of the Government’s proposed legislation when using that of Sir Robert Peel’s declaration at the same House of Commons, Dispatch Box, on 28 February 1828: “The time is come, when… we may fairly pronounce that the country has outgrown her police institutions.” It emphasises the Government commitment.

A proposed structural change to one that has been in existence for almost two hundred years is bold, whilst the introduction of a National Police Service borders on revolutionary. The specialism I present on is, Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology (CILPM). I shall illustrate that CILPM is an approach that will underwrite the government’s decades long flagship changes and afford confidence in the transition from ‘Local to National’.

All officers require the facility to be able to record information.

All forces require the facility to be able to view that recorded information.

I foresee progression of the Safer Streets Mission, but delivered through the neighbourhood policing guarantee it will need to be increasingly more reliant on the intelligence sector due to the introduction of Local Police Areas under the umbrella of new super-sized forces.

A College of Policing generic description of neighbourhood policing is one of: ‘Working collaboratively to address community issues using problem solving by integrated working with a range of public, private and voluntary partners, building trust and confidence and developing a detailed understanding of the community’.

Neighbourhood policing is a familiar terminology; tacit comprehension of the role perhaps offers clearer understanding of it as community policing, for it has often been used to describe small teams of operatives deployed at a local level in response to a specific community ‘problem’.

Interpretation of the, Local to National White Paper – the proposed guise of a Local Police Area is not neighbourhood policing as it is currently accepted.

Policing is policing, it is not intelligence.

An obvious statement, but, on closer examination an area little understood or appreciated, it is certainly not given due consideration of being preventative. Illustratively; criminal investigations are carried out retrospectively, as are missing person enquiries, road traffic regulation or the majority of policing interactions with members of the public.

It is my contention that the here-and-now, and the forthcoming National Police Service’s success will be dependent on information, it is further my case that the transition period is going to be crucial.

Carissa Véliz in The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance, does observe: “Community intelligence does temper exuberance, for society reassuringly requires cognisance of transparency in terms including ‘trustworthiness, accountability, safety, equality and justice.”

CILPM is a solution that functions on both the macro and micro level; it is cognisant of the diversity of the requirement and the intricacies of the challenges. It identifies broader impact principles, and the holistic side of the debate whilst being conscious of the minutiae of the component elements and that of providing comprehensive functionality across all disciplines of the police service.

CILPM offers two main benefits: importantly, it addresses information and intelligence separately. Secondly, it is holistic, it is designed to address both urban and rural policing; from metropolitan landscapes, through inner city hot-spots, crime ridden housing estates, town centre squares, to village greens, rural hamlets, isolated homesteads and very importantly, their communities.

Local Policing Areas: whilst yet to be clearly defined in government policy, the principle will invariably be reliant on community information. CILPM’s octahedron construction was created for this very purpose, and to underwrite communication; here within is where its strength lies as everyday information is the foundation for all intelligence.

‘Top-down direction – bottom-up action / Bottom-down activity – top-up authority’.

Community coherence is reinforced by intelligence led policing, CILPM doctrine of laminated information methodology. This intelligence process is presented as thin layers of locally obtained information bonded through operational governance. Lamination provides strong resilient products, it is founded on information submitted by neighbourhood officers, recorded directly at ground level through frontline observation, communication, surveillance, investigation, experience or intuition.

The policy white paper is inspirational in its ambition, its theory is commendable if not light on substance.

The government’s, ‘Plan for Change’ was unveiled on December 5, 2024, the third of its national missions was Safer Streets: ‘increasing police & community support presence to enhance public safety’.

April 2025 saw the Home Secretary announce the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee which is supported through the College of Policing’s, specialist training for the Neighbourhood Policing Pathway certification.

Anxiety is tweaked, I foresaw the timeline for the first officers to graduate the full Programme, revised to 2027, with the earliest data analysis on effectiveness of the programme being 2028.

I note: the full NPP1 training schedule has 5 elements totalling (20) modules which should take the officers no longer than 4hrs 40minutes to complete the whole online programme. Section 2 is the ‘community engagement’ element containing three modules of which intelligence training (1) is identified alongside how to build positive relationships with diverse communities (2), and how to effectively respond to community concerns (3).

Accordingly, in the first instance a reality is to be borne in mind, the gathering of intelligence is not only a bi-product of neighbourhood policing, it is an operational officer’s duty; and all-the-while it is the top learning objective on the College of Policing’s, Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP1) training schedule.

Policing serves many masters, operationally police forces must remain compliant with the govt’s Strategic Policing Review (SPR) which sets out the seven requirements all Police Forces must be equipped to deal with. PEEL assessments (Police Effectiveness Efficiency Legitimacy) quality assures the service provided; additionally individual force intelligence requirements are determined by their inhouse Control Strategy.

I digressed: The National Police Service will, over the coming years assume responsibility for (among others); counter-terrorism, Serious and Organised Crime operations, public order coordination, police training, regional and national criminal intelligence. County forces will be amalgamated into super-forces and a National Police Force will bring together anti-terrorist policing, the National Crime Agency with the Regional Organised Crime Units we are familiar with today.

Strength lies in everyday information being the foundation for all intelligence.

Again, the principle of CILPM will prove invaluable. Current deficiencies in the ROCU establishment may be transferred to the wider set-up: June 2025, extracts of HMICFRS’s Inspection of South West Region included, ‘it didn’t have enough personnel to fully assess the intelligence, there weren’t enough analysts to proactively analyse SOC intelligence, some personnel on neighbourhood policing teams hadn’t received SOC training and were often not aware of local SOC threats.’

Lifting county forces to the equivalence of regional sized organisations, quoting the words of the Home Secretary on 26 January 2026: ‘Within these forces, we will introduce smaller local policing areas.’     

Transformation will require local support; forces, neighbourhoods and their communities all need the benefit of an information channel where the substance of policing’s responsibilities can be recorded, reviewed, determined, and actioned. This is to be more so the case as policing is to change for every single person in England & Wales.

A system embedded method for the capture of information for a policing purpose; local information routinely submitted for scrutiny through specialist police intelligence functionality.

Transitioning from a neighbourhood policing structure to a ‘local policing area’ will be disconcerting for public and officers alike. Communication channels being of utmost importance for maintaining the confidence of local citizens and for intelligence flows into the mega-forces.

Implementation of a CILPM within current practices will satisfy neighbourhood policing’s duties in this area, additionally it will provide the crossover vehicle to the Local to National police service formular.

I wrote; ‘applying an idiosyncratic interpretation of philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s opinions to policing is enlightening; it permits the application of considered thought to be directed to the challenges facing individual forces, but critically and more accurately for them, to examine constituent parts of each neighbourhood’.

To paraphrase, if the results of criminal analysis evolve policing, it resets its advances to constantly meet the challenges, progressing at each iteration to confront problems through prepared solutions.’

Seismic change inherently delivers on many levels; the introduction of a ‘Licence to Practice’ requirement on officers a substantial one, for we have seen a start of forces (Northumbria) recruiting directly into neighbourhood policing’s ranks.

A further ambition of the white paper is a review of the, ‘extensive paperwork in policing comes from the requirements of the criminal justice system’, and evaluating the proportionality of current crime recording standards as a way of combating, ‘unnecessary recording and time wasted on form filling’.

A safeguard I envisage in local police force areas is of intelligence teams being required to supplement the deficits caused by removal of the bureaucratic barriers to crime and incident recording standards.

Here once more, the application of CILPM will offer insights across the board, from community tensions to police productivity in the ever-developing progression of governance. Reducing bureaucracy will not materialise in the short term without the regulation of more stringent guarantees under a new police performance framework.

Information is intelligence / Intelligence is crime prevention.

Policing is not exempt from being immersed in the politics game, The National Audits Office’s, ‘Police productivity’ report of November 3, 2025, is where the debate diverges between operational policing and longer-term cost cutting – productivity enhanced through technological advances. One of the main political dilemmas facing policing is convincing the public to put faith in the strategy, then providing genuine evidence that productivity is improving; all-the-while witnessing the physical appearance of more officers on the beat, proactive in their local neighbourhoods.

The NAO Summary’s key findings:

• Police forces are managing increasing financial pressures but, to-date, the Home Office has not fully understood the implications.
• The Home Office is strengthening its oversight of police forces but there are important gaps in its understanding.
• Fully funding the Government’s policing commitments while managing existing pressures will require police forces to make significant savings.

Change is not repair

The scope of the subject in context of the government release of its Policing White Paper is far too multifaceted to be adequately addressed in a single journal article, suffice to say …

At the recent 2025 Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) and NPCC summit, the APCC chair Emily Spurrell’s address to conference was: “We must show humility and work together because police reform without public trust will fail.

“We must listen to what our communities are telling us and not assume we know the answers. Because when we listen, we build trust.

“And when we lead with compassion and courage, we create a future where everyone feels safe, valued, and heard. Everyone in this room has the power and the responsibility to lead this change…

“Together, we must seize this opportunity and deliver the policing that our communities truly deserve.”

Concern is echoed; Professor Paul Taylor Chief Scientific Adviser for Policing, and NPCC Chief Constable Gavin Stephens’ foreword on the NPCC’s Policing Problem Book: ‘the service must be clear about the problems it needs to solve. We can make the biggest difference when our efforts focus on a single set of collectively identified challenges’.

28 October 2025, Police Federation website; PFEW National Chair Tiff Lynch talking on a raft of issues: “Recruiting new officers is not enough. It takes years to train a police officer, but only moments to lose one. We’re haemorrhaging experience that cannot simply be replaced.”

BBC’s News channel broadcast, ‘The Interview’ on 18 November 2025, Faisal Islam investigated AI and featured Sundar Pichai, CEO Google and Alphabet. In the course of the interview, he received the admission, “the current state of the art AI technology is prone to some errors’, this was explained through the use of open source and qualified by David Sharon, Product Manager, ‘Google Deepmind’: ‘one aspect that is large within our responsibility is provenance”.

It doesn’t get much bigger than this, for Google or Policing.

National Audit Office’s publication, Oct 2025 – An Overview of the Home Office 2024-25.

Core objective: ‘Deliver safer streets, prevent crime, reduce serious harm, increase confidence in policing and the criminal justice system’.

I also concede specialist authority to the NPCC’s Senior Leaders’ Roundtable on Serious and Organised Crime, held on 30 April 2025.

The closed conference’s key messages:

• Intelligence remains undervalued, under-resourced, and inconsistently governed.
• A shift to threat and vulnerability focused, intelligence-led policing is essential to anticipate, disrupt, and dismantle organised crime effectively.

Professor John Synnott produced a ‘White Paper’ based on the conference’s theme: ‘Refreshing the Approach to Intelligence: Building the Foundations for Effective SOC Policing’.

The attendees produced a set of recommendations which included 4 priority areas:

Priority 1 included –

• Make intelligence collection and use a performance requirement for all operational roles, from neighbourhood policing to specialist units.
• Call for forces to have identified intelligence collection strategies with clear accountability and governance across operational roles, etc.

Let me prepare the way.

‘Social Thought is thought bearing on human group life’, is what Paul Hanly Furfey wrote in 1942, ‘In spite of the complexities which modern technology has introduced, human society is the same today in its most fundamental aspects as it was five thousand years ago. The same great problems concerned with freedom, the distribution of wealth, the control of crime, …’.

1829 Police Act: ‘The new London force placed much more emphasis on patrolling the beat and this began to afford some protection in the middle-class areas of London from vagabonds, footpads and gangs.’ A more egalitarian practice these days but nonetheless interesting to see two hundred years hence its reinforcement across civil society.

Information is obtained through observation and communication. Recording, reporting, submitting material for interpretation, analysis and to inform operational planning, is core to community intelligence but without data the product is irrelevant. Intelligence officers are dependent on quantities and not necessarily quality in the first instance of submitted material. Transactionally acquired information from disparate sources, formulating structures of proactive and reactive tactics, enabling the establishment to conceive strategies, prepared solutions to counteract problems, in order to deliver safer communities.

Changes have been initiated; therefore, I leave the final word of advice to Slavoj Žižek, ‘Today more than ever, we should leave this notion of global progress behind and insist on its localised character… This means that we also become aware of the multiplicities, the complexities and – inevitably – the inconsistencies of what presents itself as progress’.

Steve Dodd is a retired South Wales Police detective. He is a subject matter expert on police intelligence having authored the force’s Community Intelligence Force Policy. An adviser on the College of Policing’s Intelligence Professionalisation Programme, he was deployed on the Government’s working group on the Western Balkans Serious Organised Crime strategy. An international liaison officer, he is an international airline certified extradition officer, plus National Financial Investigator qualified. He is currently writing his ‘Community Intelligence-Led Policing Methodology’ including the octahedron pyramid, a transtheoretical approach, and an inverted strategy thesis.