Transparent police finances and performance must replace government’s ‘light touch’ oversight, says PAC
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- PAC warns of officer wellbeing and skills challenges amid
ambiguity over how Home Office will make £354m in planned police
savings Government does not have the data it needs to
understand the extent of police forces' financial risk – and the
consequences of this on the vital services they provide. In a new
report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls on government to
support greater transparency while warning of a lack of
understanding from government on...Request free trial
- PAC warns of officer wellbeing and skills challenges amid ambiguity over how Home Office will make £354m in planned police savings
Government does not have the data it needs to understand the extent of police forces' financial risk – and the consequences of this on the vital services they provide. In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls on government to support greater transparency while warning of a lack of understanding from government on how policy changes made by government can impact policing on the ground. Following the publication of the government's policing white paper, PAC Chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP has written (attached) to the Home Office's Permanent Secretary seeking more detail on how exactly the proposed changes will address the concerns identified in the PAC's report. In 2024-25, police forces drew down £276m from their financial reserves, and funded 60% of their capital programmes from borrowing. This trend is expected to continue, with reserves set to fall by £500m (35%) by 2027-28. The PAC is concerned that forces are borrowing significant amounts compared to their net revenue and about the impact of these pressures on frontline performance. The PAC warned over a decade ago that the Home Office's ‘hands-off' approach to monitoring police forces had limited its ability to ensure value for money. Both the Home Office and the College of Policing accepted the value of greater transparency in evidence to the PAC's inquiry, but police performance data is still scattered across different organisations and can be out-of-date. The Home Office further lacks understanding of how policy changes impact forces' resources. Policing faces growing demand – for example, fraud, sexual offences, and stalking and harassment offences increased from 768,000 cases to 2.1m cases over the past decade. This is in the context of extra responsibilities absorbed by forces, with officers spending increasing time training on new regulations; evidence to the PAC showed that the new XL Bully dog policy will cost West Midlands Police alone £400,000 in the coming year. The inquiry underlines the importance of police productivity being treated as an effective end-to-end process. But the PAC found that Home Office had not fully costed the impact of early-release sentencing reforms on policing. There is work across government to help people with drug addictions to not reoffend, but the report notes this has been at a preliminary stage for some time. On the policing workforce, the report warns that police forces' response to financial pressures - reducing the number of civilian staff and using police officers in staff roles – is an expensive and inefficient practice, with evidence to the inquiry estimating this costs policing at least £55m/yr. The Home Office focus on numbers of police officers, rather than effectiveness, leaves chief constables unable to fund specialist staff to support IT changes to modernise their forces, while officers are performing tasks that can be done by civilian staff. With government funding ringfenced since 2019 on the condition forces maintain officer numbers, the PAC finds forces have limited flexibility to recruit people with the necessary skills. Funding constraints also make the roll-out of new technologies across all forces too slow. The PAC recommends that all forces produce a business plan showing how much money they require to invest in modern IT technology to improve their productivity. The report further finds that half of police officers surveyed by the Police Foundation last year didn't believe they had adequate skills to investigate fraud. Further evidence showed poor wellbeing reducing workforce capacity as officers on long-term sick leave increased, equating to 3,165 officers off-duty for considerable periods, at a cost of up to approximately £92m/yr for policing. Further police savings of £354m have been identified by government – but Home Office had not established by November last year how this would be funded. Government believes it will achieve these savings by 2028-29, but was unable to explain to the PAC the practical steps needed to achieve lasting changes in working practices across all police forces. Evidence to the PAC's inquiry demonstrated the inefficiency of police forces running separate procurement exercises, with a lack of standardised equipment across all 43 forces. Long-term improvements are also frustrated, the report finds, by government's approach to funding forces. The Home Office is still using the hopelessly out-dated police funding formula, which the PAC recommended be reformed over ten years ago. With demographic changes and regional variations in funding since that time, financial pressures on forces have increased. Bedfordshire Police and Warwickshire Police saw government funding/capita fall by nearly 12% since 2015, and the report raises further concerns that funding allocations do not reflect the needs of rural forces. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The principle of operational independence from government for our police forces is and should be sacrosanct, and underpins the vital work they do up and down the country to keep all of us safe. But operational independence must not equal a lack of oversight. Anyone attempting to track overall police financial resilience and performance enters a maze of siloed and out of date information. This is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for a government which we have found already lacks insight into the impacts of its policy changes on under-pressure forces; and for the wider public, who ought to be able to more easily hold police forces to account for how they carry out their duties. “The new White Paper on police reform presents an opportunity that cannot be wasted. The Home Office must learn from its past attempts and address the fundamental barriers to improving productivity, and if as apparently planned it results in greater transparency and stronger accountability for performance, that is something this Committee would welcome, given our concerns over government's historic light touch approach. With better information, both government and police forces will be more able to grip the current problems which our report illustrates – a concerning uptick in poor wellbeing for officers; difficulties in recruitment and retention; a lack of consistency in how equipment and technology is used and taken up. Our Committee hopes that our recommendations will help enable better quality crime detection and prevention, which will in turn leave the UK's citizens safer.” Notes to editors The Committee's report was agreed prior to the publication of the government's 2026 police reform white paper. PAC report conclusions and recommendations The Home Office does not have sufficient data on the financial resilience or performance of police forces. In 2015, the previous Public Accounts Committee concluded that Home Office's 'hands-off' approach to monitoring police forces had limited its ability to ensure value for money. In 2024-25, police forces drew down £276 million from their reserves and funded 60% of their capital programmes from borrowing. We are concerned that the Home Office still does not have the data it needs to understand the extent of the financial risks facing police forces and the consequences of this on the vital services they provide. The Home Office is adopting a stronger central role and strengthening its oversight; for example by establishing a Police Standards and Performance Improvement Directorate and developing a new performance dashboard. In 2025, it also attempted to analyse the financial resilience of police forces, although did not identify the root causes of financial problems. However, the data on police performance is scattered across different bodies and police forces, can be out-of-date and the Home Office has yet to establish measures of the productivity of police forces. Publishing data on police performance will make forces more accountable, and the Home Office and College of Policing accepted the value of greater transparency. Recommendation 1. By July 2026, the Home Office should write to us setting out the key metrics it will use to measure the financial resilience, productivity and performance of police forces. In doing so, it should set out how it will support greater transparency and strengthen accountability by publishing data on the performance of police forces. The Home Office does not understand how wider policy changes affect the demand on police resources. Police forces face growing demands as they take on additional responsibilities and tackle increasing volumes of more complex crimes, for example, the number of fraud crimes, sexual offences, and stalking and harassment offences, which require specialist expertise, has increased from 768,000 in 2014-15 (18% of police recorded crime) to 2.1 million in 2024-25 (32%). Despite this, the Home Office and policing do not fully understand the implications of changing demands. Reforms to the criminal justice system, such as the sentencing review and probation reforms, will affect the demands on policing. The Home Office has improved its working arrangements with the Ministry of Justice but, seven months after the sentencing review, it has still not quantified the impact of reforms on police. The Home Office has not established similar collaborative working arrangements with other departments, or local government, to ensure impacts of policy changes on policing are properly considered. Recommendation 2. In its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out the arrangements it has established – across departments, local government and policing stakeholders – to identify and quantify the impact of policy changes affecting policing. Police forces have limited flexibility to recruit people with the skills they need. Since the Police Uplift Programme was established in 2019, the government has ringfenced funding on the condition that forces maintain officer numbers, allocating £270 million to forces in 2025-26 via the officer maintenance grant. It has also provided £200 million to deliver an additional 3,000 personnel into neighbourhood policing roles. Consequently, police forces have responded to financial pressures by reducing the number of civilian staff and using police officers in staff roles. Police forces have also found it difficult to recruit and retain specialist staff, which restricts their ability to implement new technologies and respond to the changing nature of crime. Stakeholders have also highlighted that the current workforce mix, skills gaps and poor workforce well-being result in lost capacity and undermine productivity. Recommendation 3. The Home Office should work with the National Police Chiefs' Council to assess the implications of the existing focus on maintaining police officer numbers, including identifying the impact on personnel and the operational efficiency of forces. Within six months, the Home Office should write to the Committee with the results of this assessment, including the options to improve workforce flexibility and the potential benefits for policing. The Home Office has not established how it will achieve the planned savings in its police efficiency and collaboration programme. The Home Office has identified £354 million of potential savings over the period to 2028-29 but recognises that achieving this is high risk. As at November 2025, the Home Office had not established how it would fund its savings programme and some initiatives will require legislative change. The Home Office believes it will achieve the planned savings by 2028-29 but was unable to explain to us the practical steps needed to achieve lasting changes in working practices across all police forces. The lack of standardisation across police forces is inefficient and represents poor value for money, with the Home Office expecting to achieve half of the savings from commercial efficiencies. However, it has not yet established the scope for standardisation and how it will engage police forces to achieve change. The Home Secretary has powers to mandate forces and/or specify requirements but these have rarely been used, with the Home Office saying it needs to be confident that mandating would be beneficial for police forces. Without the right data and monitoring systems, it will be difficult for the Home Office to track and assess what progress is being made and how savings are being achieved. Recommendation 4. In its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out by when it expects to achieve its planned efficiency savings. In doing so, it should:
It is taking too long to identify and scale-up innovative practices and roll-out new technologies to improve police productivity.There are many examples of police forces exploiting innovative technologies - including audio-visual multimedia redaction, live facial recognition and enhanced video response - but scaling these across all 43 police forces has been slow. The Home Office is implementing some of the changes from the 2023 Policing Productivity Review but has reduced funding to support the roll-out of new technologies from £105 million in 2024-25 to £50 million in 2025-26. As around 80% of police funding is committed to staff pay costs, police forces have limited flexibility to invest in new technologies and have been forced to increase their borrowing to fund their capital programmes. The College of Policing acknowledged that the large number of bodies involved in the roll-out of innovative practices, including identifying and scaling innovations with the greatest potential, was not the most effective way of operating. There is also scope to improve police productivity by streamlining processes. The College of Policing has developed a diagnostic tool to help police forces identify opportunities, in areas such as burglary, but its launch has been delayed. Recommendation 5. The Home Office should provide the Committee with an update in six months on the steps it has taken to speed up the adoption of new technologies and support police forces to improve their productivity. This should include setting out:
Recommendation 6. In addition, the Home Office should:
The outdated and piecemeal approach to funding police forces is frustrating efforts to secure long-term productivity improvements. In November 2025, the Home Office was still working to develop an affordable plan to increase the number of personnel in neighbourhood policing roles by 13,000 by 2029. The government provided £200 million in 2025-26 to recruit 3,000 additional personnel but forces do not know what funding will be provided from 2026-27 onwards. The Home Office is still using the out-dated police funding formula, which our predecessor Committee recommended be reformed in 2015. The formula was revised in 2013 but subsequent demographic changes and regional variations in precept funding have created increasing financial pressures in some forces, with Bedfordshire Police and Warwickshire Police, for example, seeing government funding per capita fall by nearly 12% since 2015. We were also concerned that funding allocations did not reflect the needs of rural forces. Since 2023-24, the Home Office has provided £123 million of emergency funding to help some forces manage pressures. The new White Paper will be an important step in setting out the Home Office's vision for policing reform. It offers the opportunity to clarify the leadership role the Home Office will play and how forces will be held to account following the abolition of police and crime commissioners. Recommendation 7. After the publication of the White Paper on police reforms, the Home Office should write to the Committee setting out how the new accountability arrangements will support it in leading the policing system to improve its productivity and deliver government's policy commitments. In doing so, it should:
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