The public wants police to show up and care – will new reforms in England and Wales do this?
The government has announced a massive shake-up of policing in England and Wales, with the aim to balance providing a local police service across the country while also facing national threats. It involves the creation of a new National Police Service (touted as a “British FBI”) and reducing the number of forces across England and Wales from 43 to a possible 12 bigger, regional forces.
Elected police and crime commissioners will be replaced by regional mayors, or police and crime boards from 2028. And Whitehall will be given refreshed powers to intervene in failing forces.
The last strategic reform of policing in England and Wales was informed by a royal commission, in May 1962. This examined policing function, accountability, public relationships and staffing. It led to the current structure, cutting the number of forces down from 117.
The government claims its plans will deliver better governance and improve both national capabilities for challenging crimes and local visibility of policing. Yet, unlike in 1962, 2026 reform avoids addressing a key problem: the relationship the public wants with the police.
The idea of “policing by consent” underpins policing in the UK. Key to this is the police working with the public. But fewer than half of the public have confidence in their local policing. Data consistently shows the public do not like or want what they are getting.
The government is proposing to introduce new local policing guarantees, setting out “the minimum levels of service the public should expect to receive from their police force wherever in England and Wales they live”.
But this doesn’t need to involve a massive structural overhaul. Research tells us what the public wants is basic: they want the police to turn up, and care. Good policing relies on building relationships of trust – but you can’t achieve that by not being there.
Read more: Police are failing to deliver a minimum standard of service, according to the UK public
Lack of response
The police inspectorate has noted in recent years that understaffing and inexperienced policing teams have left forces unable to respond effectively: “This can lead to non-emergency calls for help from the public waiting days for a response, or investigations failing because key lines of enquiry have been missed.”
As part of the overhaul, the government is proposing national response and performance targets for 999 calls and for officers attending a scene. Slow response times are one thing, but not turning up at all is the bigger issue. Reports of forces screening out calls sends a message to the public that the police don’t care, and to criminals that they can get away with it.
The government argues that its proposed approach will mean less pressure on local forces to address national issues, freeing up resources to deal with local crime. But the current largest force, the Met, struggles to solve large numbers of reported crimes. I would argue that moving local policing further away from communities will further erode any working relationship with policing’s greatest stakeholder: the public.
The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee introduced in April 2025 promised to deliver better response times, but the public are still frustrated with the lack of police response to visible, low-level crimes.
Shoplifting alone is seen to be “spiralling out of control” with a brazen 20% increase in the year to March 2025. And yet the head of the Met police has called on shopkeepers to do more to protect themselves.
The proposals aim to “ensure that shop theft and assaults on shopworkers will no longer go unpunished by bringing in new powers and providing additional funding to policing, working with retailers, to take further action”.
When the police do turn up, they do not need new powers, they just need to use the powers they’ve already got. But to do that warranted police officers (with actual powers of arrest) need to be the boots on the ground – not an app, a bot or a drone.
Just like ambulances, the public should be able to rely on the police in an emergency. There needs to be far more proactive, preventative work done with partners on long-term solutions. We simply can’t afford a perpetual reactive problem solving model.
Rebuilding trust
The government is proposing a number of reforms to increase policing standards and trust, including (a yet-to-be costed) “Licence to Practise” that police officers will need to renew over their career. But officers already swear an oath of operational independence for their warrant card – this risks adding more administrative burden on overly stretched officers, despite a claim that administrative red tape will be cut.
Police officer numbers are already falling, with forces losing nearly 1,500 this year alone, largely driven by losses at the Met. The government has committed to 13,000 more neighbourhood officers, but has also placed an emphasis on automative technology. This could, I argue, be used to justify fewer actual police officers in the future.
Rising crime, coupled with falling public confidence, represents a crisis in policing. The argument is that there is an “urgent” need to better tackle crime and improve trust and confidence, yet reforms of this scale will take time.
The police must work with the public on solutions that pay for themselves. This would not rely on restructuring necessarily, just listening to people about what good policing looks like, then working together on making that happen.
John Coxhead receives funding from the Police for Research.