Pathway to local policing

Neighbourhood policing is community safety in the new world order; the Government will have passed two years of its tenure in office when its flagship policy becomes fully operational across our 43 Forces. The tools are in place; the ambition is to deliver nationally an integrated service combining theory and practice presented by clarity of direction.

The lessons of modern history are as relevant as current economic constraints because expectation on policing is as it has never been. Policing’s innovation has to be as aggressive as the criminality it confronts, which is diverse, sophisticated, crude, violent, merciless, pervasive and often life-altering.

Aspiration

The Neighbourhood Policing Pathway (NPP) was announced in September 2024, introduced by Chief Constable Sir Andy Marsh, CEO at the College of Policing. It had the Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson’s support and guarantee of funding; subsequently 11 forces piloted the programme which runs until the end of March 2025. A review process will naturally include taking learning development opportunities before the training programme is made available to each identified neighbourhood officer in England and Wales. I estimate it will take officers approximately a year to attain the NPP qualification.

The innovative training programme will not only deliver quality local police services it will have the bonus of acknowledging a new specialism. Officers in neighbourhood teams and police community support officers (PCSOs) will attain a distinct career pathway objective equivalent in stature to the Professionalising Investigations Programme (PIP) for detectives and the Intelligence Professionalisation Programme (IPP).

An emphasis on neighbourhood policing has galvanised individual force initiatives with programmes being implemented in accordance with the Government’s ‘Safer Streets’ mission (a commitment to putting police back on the beat to make safer town centres through community-led policing), and complemented by the ‘Clear, Hold, Build’ programme tackling serious and organised crime at a local level.

A consequence is attention has transferred to police forces and their police and crime commissioners (PCCs) due to approval of government finance to the tune of £19.6 billion in the current police funding settlement. The Crime and Policing Bill, presented by the Home Secretary on February 25, set out to focus legislation on anti-social behaviour, counter-terrorism, child criminal exploitation and sexual abuse. From knife crime to serious organised crime, violence against women and girls, spiking, and cuckooing; it will further criminalise offences perpetrated against the retail sector and its workers.

The Bill’s second reading on the March 10 introduced 27 new criminal offences in all. The Home Secretary commended it to the House with these words: ‘Safety from harm is not a privilege it is that should be afforded to everyone no matter their circumstances. No-one should be left to live in fear because of crime and anti-social behaviour in their communities. Under this government Safer Streets is a mission for us all to draw our communities together, put police back on the beat …’.

The case is presented that government has kept its side of the bargain and to that of its manifesto pledge to ‘Take back our streets’. This is reminiscent of the first anti-social legislation drawn up in 1998, which coincidentally also introduced the auxiliary community support officer role (PCSO as is today). Comparisons are far too distinct to be just consigned to political rhetoric, it is now for policing to deliver; the riots of the summer of 2024, and instances of vile, unimaginable horror continue to be committed across the UK bringing with it intense scrutiny via civil discourse and criticism. Therefore, it is a sobering thought that in just over a decade the number of PCSOs employed in this country has halved; from the 2005 number which stood at 4,600 to a height of almost 20,000 to where they are at 7,211 on latest 2024 figures. This is across communities where victims’ analysis recorded 2.2 million people were subjected to domestic abuse, where 1.5 million experienced stalking and 1.1 million suffered sexual assault in the last year.

The task for the nine per cent increase of 13,000 neighbourhood officers including probationary constables to be added to the resource of 147,000 officers across England and Wales may well be monumental, but frankly, new offences of violence against shopworkers and obliteration of the £200 attendance baseline alone will exponentially increase demand on police time and resources.

A community intelligence-led policing methodology is going to be an essential resource as crime complaints, occurrence reports, intelligence submissions and online community incident log updates will be inundated and may well prove insufficient to cover the range and scale of information flooding the new world order. To be clear on the distinction between information and intelligence; here College of Policing guidance is unambiguous be it strategic or tactical, intelligence it is to comply with a force’s Control Strategy, data voluntarily obtained must be for a policing purpose and be compliant with a force’s intelligence collection plan.

Situation

It is abundantly clear there is a stark realisation awaiting to be accepted. The past 50 years has not delivered against expectation; recorded offences increased almost five-fold between the 1960s to the 1980s causing attention to focus on improving police performance; likewise statistical increases of offences from 2.6 million in 1980 to four million in 1990 caused further attention to be placed at the door of police effectiveness.

Thirty years on, drawing attention to Home Office statistics, which reported 5.4 million police recorded crimes year ending March 31, 2024, now include an empirical emphasis on cumulative financial cost which is generating further concern. In one sector alone, the British Retail Consortium has published its 2025 Crime Survey Report; it concluded the annual cost of retail crime at £4.2 billion. It stated annual customer thefts were at 20.4 million crimes and that incidents of violence and abuse perpetrated against retail staff was at 737,000 (now additional crimes under Crime and Policing Bill).

A reflection further back into the midst of time is pertinent – the 1979 general election. At the time Margaret Thatcher was asked if she would make ‘law and order’ a central issue; she responded by saying it was the British public who would make it a priority. Anecdotally, the clamour of the second quarter of the 21^st century around confidence in policing suggests attitudes have not changed merely the cycle is repeating.

It is more than two decades since the Queen’s speech of November 2002 when the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, first made crime legislation the Government’s centre piece, which coincidentally included, anti-social behaviour, sexual offences and international crime.

Mission

Expanding the debate; a balance government has to weigh up is the relationship between restrictions on civil liberties (freedoms) and security for its citizens; that of improving police effectiveness while being cognisant of the consequences of repressive social control policy. The Government’s defence is this is addressed through oversight by elected PCCs and metropolitan mayors who protect the safeguards of civil liberties and management of police forces while ensuring community safety. Proponents for social control advocate our democratic system will deliver a fairer society compared to one of injustice which only ostracises communities by engendering crime.

However real the discourse is, reassurance is necessary; the College of Policing in mid-January 2025 hosted an international symposium ‘Confidence in policing – Serving the public in the age of disruption’. Here again, reiterating an emphasis on the importance of local policing, Rachel Tuffin OBE, Director at the college, said: “We know that visible neighbourhood policing, for instance, is one of the vital foundations of maintaining trust.”

Asserting the narrative; the Safer Streets mission is deliberately structured to confront negative accusations associated with oppressive state intervention included in the Crime and Policing Bill. Its counter-balanced is the assurance of police reform to include raising standards and improved accountability; the creation of a Home Office-sponsored Performance Unit to drive-up performance and promote professional excellence containing a regulated minimum standard for neighbourhood policing devised to deliver on the government’s guarantee. The structure of service delivery is calculated to protect, prevent and detect without undue restriction of individual freedom by intelligence-led neighbourhood policing, embodied by named local officers, forearmed with a promise to residents and businesses alike to have their say on policing priorities.

Integral to the strategy designed to counter anxiety is support for a multi-agency approach, and fortunately for government one which further distances it from accusations of draconian policy, (warrantless entry, access to DVLA database). The dissociation of government from allegations of oppressive interference and overzealous control is central to the tactic of shared responsibility, be that to devolved authority demanded by the will of the people.

The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in February 2025 produced a report, ‘Towards better local partnerships systems in England and Wales’. The report’s foreword includes a deliberate distinction – “we bring together community safety and criminal justice partners to work in a joined-up way to better serve people locally”.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct reassures the extent to which social control is impartial, autonomous and unconnected to State intervention is written into its statutory guidance: “We aim to improve public confidence in policing by ensuring the police are accountable for their actions and lessons are learnt” (IOPC 2020).

The extent to which the emphasis on partnerships is seen to be the way forward at the behest of state influence is reinforced by the British Retail Consortiums stance, “this requires the Government and police, working in partnership with retailers to ensure that the policy changes they are making yield tangible results” (Crime Survey Report 2025).

Conviction

Neighbourhood policing policy needs to emphasise the importance of strategy in this area by promoting a counter-position, a solution right at the heart of the matter: Transparency.

The value of transparency is trustworthiness; trustworthiness is a virtue of transparency.

Moreover, a way of reasoning is that the more transparent an organisation is the more honest it must become because it is less likely to be able to hide misconduct, this in turn will positively reinforce trust in the said organisation. It was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who is attributed as saying, transparency increases integrity. It can be argued that it also increases safety and promotes accountability, both organisationally and individually.

Transparency of duty and responsibility in a fair, unbiased, open and legitimate capacity; this is where the public wants reassurance, borne of confidence, a virtue of wearing the uniform and serving all communities of this country. Similarly, transparency through publicity can be said to increase connections between people, which in the social media age can in-turn provide the assurance of confidence, knowledge, support and trust.

Enhancement of trust is critical to the debate, to paraphrase Onora O’Neill: Transparency is supposed to discipline institutions and their officeholders by making information about their performance more public. Publicity is taken to deter corruption and poor performance, and to secure a basis for ensuring better and more trustworthy performance.

The new neighbourhood policing policy is expected to cure the ills of more than 30 years of prevarication, procrastination and PR recriminations. In practical terms the Government’s policy is of local accountability based on improving public safety and confidence, “in a way that priorities forces’ operational flexibility’, ‘(a) mix that works best for the communities they serve’ and ‘help forces deliver our neighbourhood policing guarantee” (Statement by Dame Diana Johnson, Minister of State for Policing. December 17, 2024).

Aetiology

Transgressing for a moment: the estimated annual cost of the measures proposed in the Crime and Policing Bill 2025 is put at £48.65 million a year.

What price community safety? The National Audit Office’s report, Tackling Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG), published January 2025 estimated the equivalent annual economic and social cost of domestic abuse at £84 billion. The Home Office budget to tackle VAWG for 2024/25 is £57 million.

At this juncture, I reinforce the importance of community intelligence by introducing conjecture, for it may be down to the fact its significance is not understood or to be less polite, not respected.

There is a realisation dawning for neighbourhood policing, that by the Home Secretary evoking a slogan imagined by Gordon Brown at the Carlyle Hotel in New York 30 years ago – “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” – local policing will not only be required to address crime’s aetiology, it will also be required to focus on the subsequent corollaries of criminal behaviour within its communities.

An in depth understanding of crime, from correlation of the consequence of an offence on the victim to that of the economic impact of crime on a retailer is an ambition at the heart of community policing; furthermore, appreciation of these complex relationships across the extent of delinquency will only be made possible by the proficient insight of community intelligence-led policing.

The significance of vision and comprehension, of observation and perception, are fundamental to community intelligence understanding the perpetuation of criminal offending determined by the structure of the crime. Sput:

• drug offending is a relationship between supplier and user;
• burglary is an association between thief, victim and ‘fence’, [retail crime, shoplifting]; and
• assault is personal between assailant and victim [VAWG, DA, child sexual abuse, rape].

A problem for government is delivering a unified solution for problems that are not unified; in general terms criminal acts are not integrated, and the many vagaries of their commission vary by causation, here is where a core strength of community intelligence lies.

Exploring this understanding for a neighbourhood policing programme further necessitates the provision for NPP to be able to determine its relationship with the crimes and its victims. Crime prevention, the impact of the crime on the victim, recidivism, even the question of intra-community or inter-community criminality in the case of rural crime or town centre anti-social behaviour or inner city lawlessness comes into the domain of community intelligence, reinforcing the argument that a community intelligence-led methodology is crucial to community safety.

Admonition

An abstract thus enters the discussion, which is one of an acceptance of crime. An acquiescence of the cumulative effect of media attention and every day experience has on increased tolerance of criminal activity, randomly illustrated by overlooked weekend town centre violence to the prevalence of Ketamine abuse: NHS England reported a doubling of the use of Ketamine by schoolchildren in the decade to 2023.

A stark reality in employing comparison is further illuminated by the British Retail Consortium’s Crime Survey: it presented that only 32 per cent of incidents of violence and abuse were reported to police whereby only ten per cent of those resulted in officer attendance, against a two per cent conviction rate – this is counter to a statistic of more than 2,000 crimes a day (737,000 a year). Cognisant that nationally 1.1 million reported incidents of anti-social behaviour were recorded, serious offences involving a knife stood at 55,008 and annual figure of 1,972,843 violence against the person crimes.

Statistics de-humanise victims into figures on charts. The reality of one in four women being a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime has a stark resonance. Taking the latest recorded crime figures as a yardstick is what neighbourhood policing is contending with, admittedly routine patrol officers will attend the initial report and specialist detectives will pick up the investigation, there remains a context of community relationships which falls squarely on the shoulders of neighbourhood policing.

This does not diminish neighbourhood policing’s influence; on the contrary it elevates its role, for using the comparative illustration previously discussed; drug offences recorded at 184,103; burglary and theft coming in at 3,398,648 and violence against the person at 1,972,843.

A staple of any neighbourhood patrol across the entire country will be at the corner-shop or community convenience store. The Association of Convenience Stores published its 2025 Crime Report on March 13; its influence on this discussion cannot be underestimated for in its tens of thousands of premises not only are to crimes being committed, it is where the public get to discuss matters with their local shop owner and neighbourhood bobby.

The insecurity, anger, fear experienced by shop keepers is palpable as 87 per cent stated colleagues suffered verbal abuse and nearly half experienced hate motivated abuse in the past year. Quantifying in a monetary value, the sector alone reports the cost at £316 million, at more than £6,000 per store, but the profound impact on shopworkers and keepers must be as concerning.

There is not a complacency of commitment by either politicians or policing; what must be fortified are values, because trust in policing will be reinforced not by the increase in neighbourhood officers or the promise of a named officer in each community, what will restore confidence will be the relationships forged; managing the effects of crime on victims, reducing recidivism arbitrated against the policing settlement of £2 billion, and the effectiveness of policing judged against crime statistics.

Crime control is integral to community safety programming, plainly because of its negative effects on society and its citizens and partly due to the extraordinary cost of to the economy, plus media attention and the consciousness of political ethics. However, prudence advises duplicitous promotional strategies attributed to evidence-based policing have asserted it as elaborate enough for the political classes, sufficiently complex for civil society, commandingly impressive for police officers, and authoritatively expressive for general conversation. Therefore, we are not there yet; the challenge remains for community officers to disregard the prejudice and propaganda of well-intentioned rhetoric, that of public relations hubris and publicised daily ‘success’ stories as partial one-sided propaganda adversely magnifying self-satisfaction. The National Police Chiefs’ Council regaling the success of Operation Opal (funded by the Pegasus Partnership – a joint retailer, Home Office and police enterprise), one month short of a year’s work it announced commendable results of 108 arrests of persons responsible for a substantial £5.2 million of retail crime. While in the same year, retail communities experienced 20,400,000 customer thefts, putting an overall cost of retail crime at £4.2 billion.

Similarly, an objective of glorifying success and triumphalism has a recalcitrant consequence of reinforcing negative perceptions held by communities.

Caution advises against one ambition for the NPP, that of a distinctive desire to engage the imagination and implant imperceptible aspirations in the minds of the public: the objective of increased intelligence collection is one such nebulous consequence, whilst being an honourable cause it is neither disclosable nor is it quantifiable.

Furthermore, in an environment where public order offences come in at almost half a million anti-social behaviour straddles both criminal and civil law. The arbitrary downgrading of A-S complaints using a subjective public interest test or preference of prosecution via a civil route because it is dependent on a lesser burden of proof does not always instil trust in the eyes of the public.

Denouement

Community intelligence-led policing has adaptability with a structured framework and a flexibility of application across both rural and urban environments, it provides neighbourhood officers with an accountability to contribute at a deeper level fostering a camaraderie of duty. The ontological case; neighbourhood officers patrolling their community beats, liaising, conversing, communicating in an open and trustworthy manner. Solving problems, addressing issues, offering suitable advice, de-escalating confrontation; providing protection, solace, reassurance; preventing & detecting crime, listening, whilst all the while building trust. The integration of a Bobby will foster transparency, knowledge, awareness, and community.

Oorganised crime groups move from one target to another dependent on product; community intelligence mirrors that philosophy – link the targets, prevent victims, identify the perpetrators.

Here is the second delineation: community. Whereas neighbourhood is ostensibly understood as a geographical characteristic, community is more prosaic, it is further protecting citizens not only by location but according to gender, religion, politics, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, in fact each categorisation presented.

The ambition: encouraging intuitive patrols, dialogue, integration, instilling commitment and reward, promoting teamwork, ethics, responsibility and solidarity is what will influence residents and communities alike. Promoting loyalty in their local ‘bobby’ through improved consultation, a shared bond of belonging, ultimately rebuilding trust in ‘their’ police. Fortuitously it will also absorb the officers, instilling confidence, reassuring their value, transforming them into resourceful advocates.

Community intelligence-led policing will take the fight to lawlessness, the urban and rural criminal alike, the violent, the anti-social and the indefensible. Proactively policing communities, establishing identifiable officers for citizens to relate to across villages, towns, inner-city neighbourhoods and rural hamlets.

Problem solving becomes: ‘before, during and after’; recording and reporting the insignificant, approaching the indistinguishable, engaging the unknown, questioning the incomprehensible, noticing the imperceptible, confronting the violent, protecting the vulnerable, defending justice, indoctrinating intelligence into the heart of neighbourhood policing.

The omnipotence of neighbourhood policing is integration; it is the embodiment of community intelligence and evidence-based policing. A community intelligence-led policing methodology is its practical application, the layers of detail, the insight and the theory. It is observation of neighbourhood cohesion; it is understanding the elements of community and social conscience within a collaborative police intelligence picture.