What?

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Crest has been funded by the Dawes Trust to examine how to maximise the impact of the government’s police reform programme.

 

This research will focus on:

 

• Aligning police reform with adjacent criminal justice priorities, missions and agendas, and wider programmes of reforms 

• Identifying lessons learned from other major police reform programmes 

 

Due to be published in Autumn 2026, this research is intended to inform the next phase in the police reform agenda 

 

Why? 

 

In January this year, the Home Office published a white paper which set out proposed structural and operational reforms to policing. This was in response to concerns that current policing structures were not fit for tackling the changing nature of crime, increased demand, and diminishing public trust and confidence. The scale of the Home Office ambition is striking, and the direction of travel it has set is clear. Proposed changes include:

 

• creating a National Policing Service to improve policing’s response to cross border and online crime by bringing together counter terrorism and serious and organised crime capabilities;

• a significant reduction in the number of territorial police forces through mergers and creation of new ‘local policing areas’;

• changes to governance, with the scrapping of elected Police and Crime Commissioners and the transfer of their responsibilities to elected Mayors or Policing and Crime Boards;

 

These reforms have the potential to affect and be affected by wider criminal justice system and local authority reforms and government missions to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) and knife crime.

 

Examining how the police reform programme intersects with other ongoing programmes of  reforms is essential to maximising its value - surfacing efficiencies, clarifying dependencies, and identifying (and where possible resolving) conflicts between these programmes. With legislation underpinning the National Policing Service and the publication of findings from the Independent Review into Police Force Structures due in autumn, our research is timed to track these developments and land just as the next phase of reform takes shape.

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What are we looking at?
 

The project will be delivered across three key workstreams:

 

1. Reviewing international evidence and current government commitments to understand

• What lessons can be learned from international police reform agendas and how they may be relevant to England and Wales

• The commitments, priorities and timetables of wider government reform agendas and government targets

1. Engaging strategic decision makers in roundtables  to identify opportunities for collaboration, and explore how the police reform programme intersects with and critically depends on other ongoing programmes of reform

 

Findings from phase one and two will be summarised in a briefing paper and recommendations will be made to those leading  relevant programmes of reform to maximise efficiencies and benefits, supporting better strategic alignment of relevant reform programmes and their impact on Government public safety missions (knife crime, VAWG, and trust and confidence in policing).

 

1. Developing a blueprint for policing VAWG which sets out a clear, practical framework for tackling VAWG, including the roles, responsibilities and actions needed for policing to capitalise on police and other reforms to drive progress on the government mission to halve VAWG.  This will be co-designed with policing, the NCVPP and government reform stakeholders,

 

If you are interested in being involved, or finding out more, please email rosie.margolis@crestadvisory.com