Home secretary pledges to restore neighbourhood policing

The Home secretary Yvette Cooper has announced plans to rebuild neighbourhood policing and combat surging shop theft as part of an ambitious programme of reform to policing.

In her first major speech at the annual conference hosted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners on Tuesday, Cooper highlighted four of the key areas for reform: neighbourhood policing, police performance, structures and capabilities, crime prevention.

The initiatives she announced include:

• a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee to get policing back to basics and rebuild trust between local forces and the communities they serve
• a new Police Performance Unit to track national data on local performance and drive up standards
• a new National Centre of Policing to harness new technology and forensics, making sure policing is better equipped to meet the changing nature of crime

The home secretary also announced more than half a billion pounds of additional central government funding for policing next year to support the government’s Safer Streets Mission, including an increase in the core grant for police forces, and extra resources for neighbourhood policing, the NCA and counter-terrorism.

In her speech, Cooper said that without a major overhaul to increase public confidence, the British tradition of policing by consent will be in peril.

“I am determined that neighbourhood policing must be rebuilt,” she said, pointing to its decline over the past decade. Cuts to community-based roles have left town centres vulnerable to rising crime and antisocial behaviour, she added.

“Shop theft is up at a record high, street theft is up 40 per cent in a year… Criminals – often organised gangs – are just getting away with it. We cannot stand for this,” she said.

Cooper reiterated the government’s commitment to deliver an additional 13,000 police officers, PCSOs and special constables in neighbourhood policing roles, adding that further steps will be announced in the coming weeks.

The reforms will restore community patrols with a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee and an enhanced role for Police and Crime Commissioners to prevent crime. The changes will also ensure that policing has the national capabilities it needs to fight fast-changing, complex crimes which cut across police force boundaries.

“The challenge of rebuilding public confidence is a shared one for government and policing. This is an opportunity for a fundamental reset in that relationship, and together we will embark on this roadmap for reform to regain the trust and support of the people we all serve and to reinvigorate the best of policing,” Cooper said.