Official Statistics

User engagement exercise

Published 23 July 2026

Applies to England and Wales

This user engagement exercise is seeking views on possible changes to the official crime outcomes bulletin and the associated quarterly statistical products published by the Home Office.

Before April 2013, the official statistics on investigative outcomes focused on ‘detections’ (that is, the number of cases resolved with a charge, caution) as data was not collected on other outcomes. As police forces only reported on the aggregate number of detections by crime type it was only possible to report on numbers and the ratio between detections recorded in a given period (for example, quarter and year) and crimes recorded in the same year. This was an imperfect measure as the headline ‘detection rate’ could be influenced by both the number of detections and the number of recorded crimes.

However, since April 2014, police forces have supplied data to the Home Office on a case-by-case basis and for a fuller set of investigative outcomes. This allowed us to produce actual outcome rates in a given period. The first statistics based on the new outcomes framework were published in the bulletin for the year ending March 2014. The headline metric was based on outcomes for offences recorded in the same period in which the offence was recorded (for example, the investigative outcomes of crimes recorded in 2013 to 2014 by the time of the analysis for the release in July 2014). This was a better measure than its predecessor since outcomes were based on the specific crimes recorded. However, it is not a perfect measure of the performance of the police since some investigations are not closed at the time of each quarterly/annual analysis. This means the headline outcomes rates at first publication are lower than the final outcome once all investigations are completed which become apparent as data are revised in subsequent releases. This is more apparent for some crime types which typically have long investigations associated with them – such as sexual and domestic abuse offences.

The Home Office announced in January 2026 that a new Police Performance Framework would be launched to set out how the Government will assess performance across a broad range of policing activities. This includes data on crime outcomes based on the number of investigations closed in a given period, irrespective of when the crime was initially recorded. As such, it is felt that this metric will better measure the investigative activity of the police in a given period albeit, with the caveat, that some cases will be a closed at the start of a new reporting period where most of the activity occurred in a previous reporting period and will not be captured in the statistics until the next reporting period.

This will produce a different headline rate more so for those crimes that have a relatively long investigation period. For example, for sexual offences charge/summons the rate increases as more crimes are closed following investigation. For the year ending March 2024, the charge rate for sexual offences rose from 4.2% when first published in July 2024, to 8.6% charges in the latest released figures, while the proportion of crimes under investigation fell from 26.6% when first published to 5.4% in latest stats. Using the Police Performance Framework, the proportion closed investigations resulting in charges for year ending March 2024 was closer to 9% when we first published in July 2024. This is where we expect the charge rate to be once all investigations are closed.

Policing stakeholders have argued that having 3 different measures of police performance is confusing and that greater coherence would come from aligning the headline measure in the official statistics with the Police Performance Framework.

We are seeking views from users of these statistics on whether or not we should adopt the Police Performance Framework methodology in our annual crime outcomes bulletin and use it as the headline measure in our quarterly statistical tables. If this approach is adopted, we plan to continue to publish the existing measures in the detailed statistical tables that are available on a quarterly basis to provide continuity for those who wish to use them. Further guidance on crime outcomes methodology can be found in the Technical annex.

We also welcome any other feedback you have on our statistical outputs.

We would welcome views by end of September 2026 and will look to provide an update in January 2027.

Please send responses on this user engagement exercise by email to CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk. Do not send any personal information to this email address - we want your response to be anonymous. Any personal details you do send to us (including your email address) will be deleted. Please note, because your responses will be anonymous, we will be unable to respond to a subject access request if you want to see what you originally sent to us.

If you wish please include which sector you work in, for example, academia, media, government, charity and voluntary, police forces, commercial or private sector or as interested members of the public.