Public Services performance tracker
Cassia Rowland from the Institute for Government sums up their new Public Services Performance Tracker on policing.
Each year, the Institute for Government’s Public Services Performance Tracker takes a data-driven look at the state of nine key public services, examining spending, staffing, demand, productivity and performance. The criminal justice chapters, covering the police, criminal courts and prisons, were published last week. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be summarising the key findings of each chapter – and what it means for the government. First up: the police.
Spending has increased but remains below 2009/10 – and is increasingly funded by council tax
Following big cuts in the early 2010s, police spending has slowly risen in recent years and is now back just below 2009/10 levels, and expected to continue to creep up. But police funding is increasingly coming from the police precept, which now makes up more than a third of police funding, up from a quarter in 2009/10. This has also meant more deprived areas – which raise less revenue from council tax – have seen smaller funding increases.
As officer numbers have risen, average experience has fallen, and there are gaps in key skills
The 20,000 extra officers promised by Boris Johnson were successfully hired and there are now just under 150,000 officers (full-time equivalent), slightly more than in 2009/10. A big recruitment wave inevitably means more inexperienced officers. More than half of officers now have less than ten years’ experience; around a third have less than five.
There is a real shortage of investigative skills, with not enough experienced detectives and junior officers holding complex cases without appropriate supervision. In nearly every force, half of rape and serious sexual offences roles were filled by trainees. Digital forensics is also a major gap. The Police Digital Service and NPCC are working to address this through a joint digital forensics programme, but it’s not yet clear what impact that is having.
Crime remains well below the 2000s but is creeping up – and is increasingly dominated by domestic abuse and sexual violence
Crime has been falling since the mid-90s, especially theft and violent crimes. But in the last two years, it has crept up, driven by fraud and some types of theft – though overall crime still probably remains below pre-pandemic levels and much lower than earlier years.
The number of domestic abuse victims has also declined steadily. 7.4% of women and 3.3% of men were estimated to have been victims of domestic abuse in 2023/24, down from 9.2% and 4.1% respectively in 2009/10 to 2023/24. But it has fallen noticeably less than other crime types, so now makes up a bigger proportion of crime. We estimate that domestic abuse victims made up around 40% of all crime victims in 2024. Sexual assault shows a mixed picture, but seems to have risen in the last ten years, with an estimated 900,000 victims in 2024/25.
This shift means domestic abuse and sexual violence now make up much more of the crime the police are dealing with. Rape, for example, accounted for just 0.4% of all police recorded crime in 2009/10 but 1.3% in 2024/25. In 2023/24, 16% of police recorded crime was identified as domestic abuse-related – likely to be an undercount of the true figure.
Charges and other positive outcomes have fallen, but this is principally because crime has fallen…
The big fall in the number of offences charged or resulting in another ‘positive outcome’ has got a lot of attention – and criticism – in recent years, and has often been attributed to declines in officer numbers. But our analysis suggests it’s more to do with the fall in crime itself. Look at how estimated crime incidents, arrests and charges have changed over time (relative to 2010/11):
The trend in officer numbers doesn’t match anything like as closely. (If you think I’m wrong on this one, I’d love to hear why! You can email me here:
…but it is taking the police much longer to charge offences
In 2015/16, it took two weeks, on average, for an offence to be charged. In 2024/25, it took six. Other positive outcomes, such as cautions and community resolutions, are also taking much longer. This is principally because technology and process changes mean responding to crime is becoming more, rather than less, time-intensive for policing.
Two things are driving this. First, the massive increase in digital evidence across almost all cases, everything from CCTV to WhatsApp messages to browsing histories. Second, case files now have to be submitted to the CPS for a charging decision ‘trial ready’, with much more evidence included and all irrelevant material redacted. Combined with the volume of digital evidence, this can create a huge amount of work on even simple cases.
These problems are contributing to a crisis of confidence in policing. 16% of people say they have ‘no confidence at all’ in the police to deal with crime in their local area, compared to just 4% who have ‘a lot of confidence’.
The government needs to figure out its police reform agenda
Yvette Cooper promised a police reform white paper in spring 2025. Even by Whitehall standards, spring has come and gone with no more detail on those reforms, and Shabana Mahmood is now home secretary. The initial announcements included some strong positives, such as better coordination on IT, procurement and data-sharing. But key questions like where the balance will fall between local control vs central direction are still unanswered, which is only making things harder for policing.
Public Services Performance Tracker has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation
