Starmer launches community policing guarantee to get “more police in your town, fighting antisocial behaviour, taking back our streets”
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Keir Starmer will today launch Labour's Community Policing
Guarantee to make streets safe again. Announcing the
five-point plan in his speech to Labour Party Conference, the
Labour leader will pledge guaranteed town centre patrols
through 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the
streets. The Community Policing Guarantee also includes new
commitments to ensure local people are involved in setting local
policing priorities, tough new sentencing for...Request free trial
Keir Starmer will today launch Labour's Community Policing Guarantee to make streets safe again. Announcing the five-point plan in his speech to Labour Party Conference, the Labour leader will pledge guaranteed town centre patrols through 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the streets. The Community Policing Guarantee also includes new commitments to ensure local people are involved in setting local policing priorities, tough new sentencing for assaults on retail workers, tougher police action on shoplifting and stronger powers for local councils, police and courts to introduce zero tolerance zones in town centres to stop antisocial behaviour. In his speech, Keir Starmer is expected to “call time on wasteful police procurement” which funds Labour’s plan for new officers and say that Labour’s community policing guarantee will deliver “more police in your town, fighting anti-social behaviour, taking back our streets.” This comes as research shows 50 per cent of the public say they never see an officer on the beat – up from 27 per cent when Labour left office in 2010. Criminal damage affecting town centres is up nearly 20 per cent on pre-pandemic levels, and more than 20 million people have personally experienced or witnessed ASB in the last 12 months. Labour’s Community Policing Guarantee Labour will put police back in your town centres and neighbourhoods to make streets safe again, with increased patrols and 13,000 more neighbourhood police & PCSOs on the streets. 1. Police on the beat again We’ll bring back proper neighbourhood policing by ensuring every part of the country has more local officers and PCSOs, and guaranteed town centre patrols with tougher powers. We’ll give every community a named officer they can get in touch with, so policing gets back to what it’s supposed to do. 2. Zero tolerance of antisocial behaviour Getting tough with those who blight our towns, with new powers to ban repeat offenders from town centres and stamp out public drinking and drug use. Every local area will have a dedicated lead focused specifically on tackling anti-social behaviour.
3. A crackdown on shoplifting and violence
4. Put communities back at the heart of policing We will give local people and businesses a say in how their local area and town centre is policed, ensuring the police work with them on deciding priorities. 5. Make community policing something to be proud of We will ensure that the path to career progression in policing is through getting to know your community - and ensure all neighbourhood officers are properly trained to be problem-solvers, not just recorders of crime. We will also work with the College of Policing and police chiefs to ensure neighbourhood policing has access to cutting edge technology and methods, including data analytics and hotspot policing. Ends Notes: Policy detail: 1 – Police on the beat again
Labour has announced ambitious plans for a major expansion in
neighbourhood policing - https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Mission-Safety.pdf
This will include guaranteed patrols of town centres and a named officer for every local area. 2 – Zero tolerance of antisocial behaviour Respect orders - in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Act 2014, the Tories’ weakened enforcement powers for antisocial behaviour – removing the power of arrest for breaches of anti-social behaviour injunctions. Labour has set out plans for new Respect Orders to fix this loophole – civil orders, containing new place-based conditions such as bans from town centres and the power of arrest on breach - Labour pledges town centre patrols and new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour | The Independent. Expedited PSPOs - under the last Labour government, a range of place-based protection orders were introduced to limit the proliferation of undesirable activity in urban areas. These were streamlined in the 2014 Act into a single new place-based order, called the Public Space Protection Order (PSPO). There are consistent complaints that the process for applying for a PSPO is too slow and unwieldy to respond to emerging threats. Labour forced the government to concede on our amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022 establishing ‘expedited PSPOs’ for the purposes of preventing harassment outside of schools, vaccine centres and Test & Trace clinics. We are proposing to pilot extending this provision to allow for the temporary introduction of new expedited PSPOs in town centres. Established in response to significant emerging problems, these could be more quickly enforced than existing PSPOs in order to grip a temporary problem - however, they would only last for six months in order to ensure proper consultation and safeguards are in place. As with current PSPOs, they could restrict specified activity in town centres such as street drinking, harassment and littering - and an incoming Labour government would consult on whether the existing tests for applying them (based on harm and likelihood of ongoing disruption) are appropriate, or are too restrictive. ASB lead - plans for a new mandatory lead for anti-social behaviour for every local area, a local anti-social behaviour strategy, and new national guidelines set by the Home Office - Making Britain’s streets safe (labour.org.uk). 3 – Crackdown on shoplifting and violence Ending the Tories’ downgrading of ‘low-value shoplifting’ - Section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Act 2014 introduced by Theresa May established a new category of shoplifting, designated ‘low-value shoplifting’ - for shoplifting of goods amounting to less than £200 in value. Under that Act, any incidents involving goods below £200 would have to be tried as ‘summary only offences’ - meaning that unless the defendant opted for a Crown Court jury trial, it would automatically be held at the Magistrates’ Court. The police could charge the cases, and they would also be eligible for the Single Justice Procedure, meaning that a defendant could plead guilty by post and pay a small fine - thereby avoiding a court appearance. This change has acted as a signal to the police to deprioritise any enforcement for shoplifting of goods below £200 at all – even in cases of repeat and organised shoplifting - with arrests for theft offences falling from 136,000 in 2018 to just 78,000 in 2022. By scrapping this sub-category of shoplifting, we will end the farce of repeat shoplifting below £200 going unpunished, and repeat serious and organised criminals avoiding court. It will make it easier to prioritise repeat and organised shoplifting whatever the level of any individual theft so it can be properly dealt with - while ensuring that non-court sanctions including pleading guilty by post are reserved for first-time offenders, rather than serious repeat criminals. New specific offence of ‘assault on a retail worker’ - punishable with up to two years in prison - at present, the law contains standalone offences of ‘assault against a constable’ and ‘assault against an emergency worker’, carrying tougher penalties compared to standard ‘common assault’. However, unlike Scotland, no such specific offence exists in England and Wales for assaults on shop workers, despite escalating concern over retail crime. During the passage of the PCSC Act 2022, the government conceded on making violence against a retail worker an ‘aggravated factor’ in sentencing. However, it did not change the statutory maximum for an offence of common assault, which still stands at six months’ imprisonment - Information note for Retailers- S156 PCSC Act 2022.pdf (nbcc.police.uk). Reporting systems - work with PCCs and Chiefs to roll-out CCTV, radios, and ‘one-touch’ reporting systems for retail crime. Several areas including Durham and Sussex (in cooperation with the Co-Op) have rolled out single online reporting systems for retail crime, such as One Touch and Sensys – in addition to longer-standing tools funded through Business Crime Reduction Partnerships, such as CCTV and two-way radios. These have resulted in significant productivity gains, with thousands of officer hours saved in addition to improved outcomes for retailers. Labour is pledging to work with PCCs, police forces and Business Crime Reduction Partnerships to use existing capital funding to extend the roll-out of this technology across all forces, including through consideration of implementing these initiatives through PCC Police and Crime Plans - SPCC - Ground-breaking partnership between Police and Co-op catches prolific offenders (sussex-pcc.gov.uk). 4 – Communities at the heart of policing Town centre policing plans - with local residents and retailers involved in agreeing priorities for police in town centres, giving local people a say in how their local area is policed. There is currently no requirement on police forces to develop specific plans around town centre policing. By introducing a legislative requirement for such plans to be created and agreed with retailers and residents (through the local council), Labour will give local people a voice in how their town centre is policed - and can force the police to take town centre community policing seriously, both in terms of patrols and also in terms of data collection and intelligence. PCC plans to tackle town centre crime - at present, PCCs have no requirement to tackle specific crime types within their annual Police and Crime Plans - leaving the content of these plans up to the respective PCC. We have already committed to requiring a specific ASB strategy from every PCC. We will extend this to include measures to tackle high street and town centre crime more broadly - using the levers of the PCC to drive other agencies to develop a clear set of actions to reduce reoffending. 5 – Make community policing something to be proud of Embed community policing in police career structures - so that the path to senior jobs is through getting to know your community. Labour will ensure that neighbourhood officers are given more consistent career pathways, including by ensuring that supervisors show consideration for promotion for neighbourhood officers at regular intervals and requiring a senior leadership role for neighbourhood policing in every force. These measures could be mandated through the Police Act 1996, and would emulate part of the new Met Commissioner Mark Rowley’s reforms (in appointing a Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Local Policing in London). In addition, existing College of Policing Guidance specifies the principles by which a chief should be appointed within relevant legislation. By amending the guidance to include a presumption in favour of officers with time spent in neighbourhood policing, we can ensure officers see neighbourhood policing as a specialism with strong career prospects. Ensure all neighbourhood officers are properly trained to be problem-solvers - Labour will professionalise neighbourhood policing, working with national bodies such as the College of Policing to ensure a bespoke training programme is in place for neighbourhood policing focused on problem-solving skills rather than simply the application and use of powers and procedures (reflecting earlier work led by Sir Denis O’Connor and Stephen Otter).
Extend the use of data analytics and hotspot policing to neighbourhood policing - at present, too often the advanced capabilities used by other policing teams (including intelligence analysis and novel techniques like hotspot policing) are not routinely used by neighbourhood policing teams. As part of the mission to professionalise neighbourhood policing, Labour will therefore work with police chiefs to ensure those capabilities are also available to neighbourhood policing teams – and will work with the College to deliver a strong evidence base from the centre on what works to tackle neighbourhood crime.
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