Police forces in England and Wales are set to face new national standards on emergency response times and neighbourhood policing under a package of reforms expected to be announced by the Home Secretary.
Under the proposals, police response officers would be expected to reach the most serious incidents within 15 minutes in urban areas and 20 minutes in rural areas, while 999 calls would be expected to be answered within 10 seconds.
The government says the changes are intended to create consistent expectations across forces, as current data on response times is collected differently and there is no uniform system of accountability when targets are not met.
If forces fail to deliver against the new standards, the Home Secretary would have the power to send in specialists from higher-performing forces to support improvements, including where slow response times form part of wider systemic problems.
The reforms also include an extension of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, which has already introduced named, contactable officers for neighbourhoods. Under the proposed expansion, every council ward in England and Wales would have its own named officers, with residents able to contact them directly about crime and anti-social behaviour. Forces would also be expected to respond to neighbourhood enquiries within 72 hours, setting out what action is being taken.
For local communities in Nottinghamshire, the proposals would mean clearer expectations around how quickly police attend serious incidents, greater visibility of named officers at ward level, and defined timescales for responses to neighbourhood concerns. However, the measures are proposals rather than operational changes at this stage, and their implementation would depend on national policy decisions and funding arrangements.
The government argues that everyday crimes such as shoplifting, street theft, drug dealing and anti-social behaviour are having a growing impact on communities. It cites national figures showing shop theft has increased by 72 per cent since 2010 and street theft by 58 per cent. Ministers also say administrative burdens and outdated systems have reduced frontline capacity, with trained officers increasingly assigned to support roles.
As part of the reform package, the government plans to reduce administrative requirements and review the recording of non-crime incidents, with the aim of freeing up officer time. Changes to police funding are also proposed to give forces greater flexibility in deploying staff. This includes scrapping the Officer Maintenance Grant, which required forces to maintain specific officer numbers and, according to the government, contributed to uniformed officers being placed in back-office roles. Over the past six years, the number of trained officers in support roles has risen by more than 40 per cent to over 12,600, while total officer numbers increased by around 20 per cent.
The government says it will continue to support the national roll-out of the Right Care, Right Person programme, which has been credited with saving an estimated 370,000 officer hours per year across five forces by redefining the police role in responding to non-crime incidents. A new Neighbourhood Policing Pathway training programme, already piloted in 11 forces, is also being expanded to standardise training and practice across the country.
The reforms are expected to be set out in a forthcoming white paper titled “From local to national: a new model for policing”, which the Home Secretary is due to present as part of what the government describes as the most significant overhaul of policing for two centuries. Alongside structural changes, ministers have announced record police funding of £18.4 billion, representing an increase of more than £3 billion and an 11 per cent real-terms rise compared with 2023/24.
At this stage, the proposals outline intended national policy direction rather than confirmed operational changes at force level. Further details on implementation, accountability mechanisms and the impact on individual police forces, including Nottinghamshire Police, are expected to emerge following the publication of the white paper and subsequent policy decisions.
