Progress against our Policing Plan 2025-27

Our policing plan aims to give confidence to the public, and our staff, about what we want to achieve together. It gives a route map and clear ideas of how we will get there – it outlines what we’ll be doing over the next two years to move closer to our vision of being an outstanding police force.

We have significantly more challenging financial circumstances to take account of, and we have changes ahead in terms of both national police reform and local government reform.

In terms of progress, we have:

• Achieved £7.8 million savings
• Seen a reduction in house burglaries – 777 fewer in the 12 months to the end of September 2025
• We are investing in 26 more police officers in the next year or so, taking us to the highest number of officers in 15 years.
• Increased visibility and business engagement in town centres – 13,000 more hours patrolling hotspot areas
• Problem solving within communities – reducing calls for service by 90 per cent after identifying route causes
• We have improved body worn video capability
• Invested in an AI virtual assistant designed to handle non-emergency queries to improve how accessible and responsive our force contact is. It will provide information on topics such as lost property, and redirect users to appropriate services.
• We have invested in an additional 13 electric vehicles in our fleet, which takes us to a total of 18
• Invested in a number of new staff in our vetting team.

Our staff should be proud of what they’ve achieved over the last two years, but I get no sense of complacency. We have much more to do in improving the service we deliver to our communities and victims.