Correspondence

Pursuing all reasonable lines of enquiry: letter to police leaders

Published 28 August 2023

To:
Chief Constables
Police & Crime Commissioners
National Police Chiefs Council
Association of Police & Crime Commissioners

Cc:
CEO, College of Policing
HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Fire & Rescue Services

28 August 2023

Dear all,

Our shared mission to relentlessly pursue criminals and improve police visibility and responsiveness

We should be proud that we now have an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales as a result of the police uplift, meaning we have a record number of Police Officers – 149,566 as at 31st March 2023. This was achieved through good collaboration between the Home Office and policing. We are continuing to support you by removing bureaucratic impediments so that officers can do the job they applied for. Changes to Home Office Counting Rules, initiatives such as Right Care Right Person and the new National Partnership Agreement on mental health, are all designed to free up officer time for frontline policing.

However, all too often, the public feel that information they provide to the Police about a crime is not acted on. This must stop as it undermines public confidence and misses opportunities to solve crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. The public expect more than just being given a crime number when they report a crime. They want to see police taking visible action in communities and thoroughly investigating crime.

Since being appointed to our roles last year, we have driven forwards a programme of reform for policing to return to a back-to-basics approach, which places catching criminals and supporting victims of crime at the forefront of its mission.

We are therefore pleased that, following recent discussions we have had with the NPCC, APCC, College of Policing and HM Chief Inspector, you have responded to these concerns and come together to update your professional practice for investigations, agree to a national commitment to follow all reasonable lines of enquiry for all crime types, and to strengthen police visibility and responsiveness. We understand that no crime investigations will now be screened out solely on the basis that they are perceived as “minor”.

This is vital because there is no such thing as a “minor” crime. If any crime type is unchecked, public confidence is undermined, an atmosphere of disorder and menace can rapidly develop and there is the likelihood of escalation to more serious or widespread offending. Offences such as shoplifting, mobile phone theft, car theft, criminal ASB and public drug possession all merit investigation where there is a reasonable line of enquiry to pursue, and prosecution where the evidence supports it.

Updated professional practice for investigations

We are grateful to the College of Policing for updating the Authorised Professional Practice (APP) on investigation and drafting new Guidelines to underpin the national commitment to follow all reasonable lines of enquiry for all crime types. We welcome the focus these will bring to investigation quality (including the first “golden hour”), which is an integral part of our shared mission to relentlessly pursue criminals to make our neighbourhoods safer and improve public confidence in policing.

The APP and Guidelines empower officers by providing tools to support effective decision-making, open-mindedness and professional curiosity. They illuminate the complexities around defining a bespoke proportionate response in each unique case and underline the role of supervisors and Chief Constables in ensuring this happens. All officers and staff now have clear direction on applying a consistent standard of service to have the greatest chance of securing a positive outcome for a victim.

The College of Policing is developing specific good practice guidance on conducting burglary investigations. It emphasises to investigators the importance of attending the scene as early as possible to maximise the material available for the investigation. The ‘golden hour’ – the period immediately after an offence has been committed, when lines of enquiry are most readily available – is crucial in taking effective early action to secure evidence for investigations, and this concept should be carried through to all crime types. When following all reasonable lines of enquiry, it is important that investigators act swiftly and reasonably as set out in the APP.

The APP and Guidelines also reiterate the responsibilities towards victims of crime, including the need to support them throughout an investigation and keep them informed of progress. We know from our conversations with you all that you agree on the need to ensure victims are at the forefront of the investigative process. The Code of Practice for Victims of Crime sets out the crucial rights and services that must be provided to a victim of crime by all CJS organisations. In relation to the investigation process victims must have details of the crime recorded without unjustified delay, be provided with information when reporting the crime, and be provided with information about the investigation and prosecution. The Victims and Prisoners Bill enshrines the overarching principles of the Victims Code of Practice in legislation. It emphasises the importance of service providers carrying out their duties to victims by placing a duty on Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) to review their compliance with the Code of Practice, driving up standards of the service for victims. We look forward to working with PCCs to review the outcomes and learning that arises from the new Code.

By agreeing this updated professional practice and national commitment, we are reassured that you are focussed on common sense policing, important opportunities will not be missed, and public expectations are understood. The Guidance makes clear that this does not mean every crime will always be investigated, but it does mean that where there is a line of enquiry that is reasonable and proportionate it must be followed (as required by the code of practice to the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996). No crime should be screened out just because it is considered minor. Every crime has an impact, creates a victim, and deserves a proper response.

What can the public expect to see differently

This builds on the success of your commitment to attend all home burglaries. We are extremely pleased to hear that police forces across England and Wales have been implementing this as it is key to getting the basics right. As part of an officer’s enquiries with neighbouring properties following a burglary, by following all reasonable lines of enquiry we would expect forces to take advantage of footage available from CCTV, dashcams and smart doorbells to help identify suspects (including using facial recognition technology available to all Forces) and place them at the scene of the crime.

There may be instances where a victim sees their stolen property offered for sale on online sales sites. In this situation, if the victim has tangible evidence to assist police such as details of the website it appears on and evidence to show the item belongs to the victim, it is reasonable for the police to request information from the online sales site to help identify the suspect.

Vehicle theft is extremely disruptive to victims, particularly those who rely on their vehicles to earn a living and is often linked to the activities of organised crime groups. This is why we funded the Police Crime Prevention Initiative (PCPI) to develop online training on the basics of vehicle examination and vehicle crime trends, which went live in April with good uptake across police forces. We are keen to continue engaging with you on the action being taken across the country to retrieve stolen vehicles which contain GPS trackers and where their location can be observed. An increased focus on vehicle crime in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in the first three months of 2023 led to 59 arrests and the recovery of 100 stolen vehicles, and MPS data suggests an 8% reduction in vehicle theft in the same period. This is a great start. We look forward to receiving updates on similar progress in other areas. Similarly, when victims of theft provide the police with the location of a stolen mobile phone, via use of a tracking app for example, and there is a reasonable chance of recovering it, they should take action.

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) and recreational drug use are a blight on our public spaces, they make our streets unsafe, and fuel more serious criminality by propping up the illegal drug trade. As part of the ASB Action Plan, we are investing £110 million into hotspot response and immediate justice initiatives to clamp down on ASB and repair the damage caused to communities. We want to see police operating on the basis of a zero-tolerance approach to drug misuse; those who are clearly and flagrantly in possession of controlled substances in public places should face the consequences. Officers have our full support in using their powers, such as stop and search, to protect neighbourhoods from illegal drugs and the harm they cause. We are proud to say that under this Government, it has never been easier for the police to make legitimate use of stop and search powers. Conducting a search based on reasonable grounds for suspicion of possession of an illicit drug is a power that every police officer should feel confident in using. Using available CCTV in areas affected by anti-social behaviour to identify suspects is also reasonable, and this should be a cornerstone of how officers are using accessible information to launch and complete investigations into suspects.

Shoplifting is often wrongly considered to be a minor crime, but if it is left unchecked it escalates, shop workers often get assaulted, there are significant financial losses and disorder escalates. The British Retail Consortium 2023 Crime Report showed that between April 2021 and March 2022, there were 867 incidents of violence and abuse towards retail workers per day; and £953 million was lost to customer theft, with just under eight million incidents. Last year we took a significant step to help protect retail workers by introducing a statutory aggravating factor for assaults against public-facing workers. We are sure you will agree on the importance of officers following every reasonable line of enquiry in cases of shoplifting, including using CCTV to identify suspects, and using clear images of any unknown suspects of crime to search the Police National Database for matches using facial recognition when appropriate. Best practice comes where retailers and police work together through local Business Crime Reduction Partnerships to share information and target the most prolific offenders.

We understand that officers must make difficult operational prioritisation decisions. This will continue to play a crucial role in how the police keep the public safe. However, with the historic uplift in officer numbers and measures to reduce pressure on police time, you are empowered to thoroughly investigate more crimes. The Government and the public expect this.

We are pleased HMICFRS will be using the existing PEEL inspection framework to assess the extent to which forces are following all reasonable lines of enquiry and undertaking proportionate, thorough, and timely investigations. We expect to see these reports reflect improvements in investigations and will continue to engage with you.

Police Visibility and Response

The College of Policing’s Neighbourhood Policing Guidelines set out the importance of engaging communities, solving problems, and having a targeted visible presence in communities. We are pleased that you all agree improving visibility in a targeted way that focuses on tackling crime and ASB and making neighbourhoods safer should be a priority for all forces. It is our expectation that PCCs and Chiefs do all they can to support this in order to guarantee the following improvements:

• Every frontline officer to understand and be encouraged to embrace a culture of visible policing.
• Every force to deliver police visibility that seeks to improve public confidence by targeting crime and anti-social behaviour hotspots. Neighbourhoods should feel safe, and the public should feel the benefit of police action in their community.
• Police to proactively problem-solve and tackle the causes of crime and anti-social behaviour at source, working closely with partners.
• Neighbourhood policing to continue to form the bedrock of British Policing, with smarter officer deployment to make sure they are dealing with issues that matter to the public.

We would be grateful if all Chiefs and PCCs can respond to us by the end of September to make clear their plans to improve confidence in local policing and police visibility and share the results of this by March 2024. This includes details of how officer deployment and visibility is captured in performance management and problem-solving plans and how forces are championing the right culture. We want to understand how forces are using data to understand abstraction rates for neighbourhood officers and other public-facing officers and measuring outcomes of problem-solving, targeting hotspots and visible community engagement. This will be important for all areas but in particular, to rural areas where for example members of the public might live a substantial distance from a police station. We will be monitoring police performance, including the next round of PEEL findings and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) findings on public perceptions of policing, looking for evidence of improvement.

In addition, our ambition is to see you being more responsive to the public through the better use of technology to improve public contact. This will be achieved by:

• Working with you to standardise and improve measurement of attendance times and non-emergency response
• All emergency 999 calls being answered in less than 10 seconds and all non-emergency contact, whether 101 or online, responded to as quickly as possible.
• Encouraging forces to publish 101 answering time data by March 2024.

We will be writing to you shortly with more detail on this issue, but we hope you will agree that publishing 101 call answering times is in the best interest of the public. To this aim, the Home Office will work with you and HMICFRS to reach agreement on the arrangements for the publication of 101 data and also the longer-term work needed to standardise the management of the 101 service, to provide a more consistent, effective and satisfactory service to the public.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to support you in this effort, through funding of £13 million this year for the continued rollout and improvement of the “Single Online Home” for police/public interactions; providing a further £1 million allocated this year to build and pilot in Humberside a “Citizen Portal”; and providing funding, via the Policing Chief Scientific Adviser to support an ‘automated triage’ pilot in the West Midlands for 101 calls, which uses AI to triage in-coming calls so that the public can more accurately be directed to the most appropriate responding service if their call is better suited to organisations other than the police. From next April, all Forces (excluding City of London Police) will also receive £1m each to fund ASB hotspot patrolling and £1m each to fund Immediate Justice in relation to ASB, building on the current pilots underway in sixteen Force areas.

We would like to thank you once again for your commitment to improving investigation quality and delivering visible policing that is responsive to the public. This is a substantial and meaningful commitment that we believe will help drive down crime, improve public safety and build confidence in Policing.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon. Suella Braverman KC MP
Home Secretary

Rt Hon. Chris Philp MP
Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire