Are the British police adequately resourced?

The question whether the British police are adequately resourced, and whether those resources are directed appropriately towards serious crime, can only really be answered in relative terms. It requires comparison over time, comparison with the scale and character of contemporary crime, and comparison with international standards that describe what a democratic police service ought to be able to do.

This essay focuses primarily upon England and Wales, where the data are richest, but many of the themes are applicable across the United Kingdom.

What do “adequate resources” mean in international law and practice?

International instruments do not set a numerical benchmark for officer numbers or budgets. Instead, they frame resourcing as a functional requirement. The United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials describes the police duty as to “serve the community” and “protect all persons against illegal acts”, while respecting human dignity and human rights. Guidelines issued by the United Nations stress that governments which do not invest sufficient resources in the administration of justice leave judges, prosecutors and law enforcement unable to discharge these duties, with knock-on effects for the rule of law and public confidence.

The United Nations standards and norms in crime prevention add that crime prevention and law enforcement require “adequate resources”, and emphasise a balance between prevention, investigation and other criminal justice functions. The European Code of Police Ethics, adopted by the Council of Europe, goes further for European democracies. It states that member states should equip their police services with the necessary means to carry out their functions effectively, that those means should be used efficiently, and that the allocation of resources should be subject to democratic oversight.

Taken together, these standards imply that a police service is adequately resourced only if it can meet the actual pattern of demand in a timely and rights-compliant way, and if its resources are directed by a rational, harm-focused strategy.

The resource picture: funding and workforce

Policing in England and Wales experienced substantial real-terms reductions in the early 2010s. Independent analysis suggests that between 2010/11 and 2014/15 police spending fell by around 14 per cent in real terms, with further cuts through to 2018/19, when total funding was down by about 19 per cent compared with 2010/11, with large variation between forces.

Since then the direction has reversed. Home Office figures indicate that, compared with the financial year ending March 2016, overall agreed funding for policing in England and Wales will have increased by about 19 per cent in real terms by March 2025. The most recent spending review plans a further average real-terms increase in police “core spending power” of 1.7 per cent a year between 2025–26 and 2028–29, largely to support neighbourhood policing commitments.

Workforce numbers have broadly followed this pattern. House of Commons Library analysis, drawing on Eurostat, indicates that in 2022 England and Wales ranked 29th of 32 European jurisdictions for police officers per 100,000 population, a relatively lean ratio by continental standards. The police uplift programme has since increased numbers. As at 31 March 2025 there were 241 full-time equivalent officers per 100,000 residents in the territorial forces of England and Wales, although this masks wide variation between forces.

Internationally, United Nations survey data suggest a global median of roughly 300 officers per 100,000 people, with European and some West Asian states often above that. On a simple headcount basis, therefore, British policing operates with fewer officers per capita than many comparator European systems. That does not prove that Britain is under-policed, but it underlines that the system is far from generously staffed when judged against international practice.

Financial sustainability and non-pay pressures

Headline funding figures also conceal underlying fragility. A recent National Audit Office report on police productivity records that in 2024–25 police forces in England and Wales drew down £276 million from reserves and borrowed £632 million to fund capital programmes, and warns that these short-term measures risk undermining future financial resilience. Forces have also been running high vacancy levels, using warranted officers in roles that could be undertaken by civilian staff, and reprioritising their services to live within constrained budgets.

In effect, the system is being asked to do more, with more complex crime and higher expectations, yet with only modest real-terms growth from a reduced base and with little slack. The Institute for Government’s Performance Tracker on policing makes the point that a large share of police time is now consumed not by investigating traditional volume crime, but by neighbourhood patrols, public events, mental health incidents and multi-agency safeguarding work. These are important functions, but they further stretch finite officer time.

That pattern of strain is reflected in workforce health indicators. Home Office statistics record that, as at March 2025, 4.3 per cent of officers and 3.7 per cent of police staff were on long-term absence, with long-term sickness rising compared with the previous year. High sickness and turnover rates are precisely the sort of warning signs that UN standards associate with inadequate working conditions and a risk to integrity and effectiveness.

Direction of resources: serious crime and investigative capacity

If one looks purely at inputs, British policing appears lean but not catastrophically under-resourced. The more troubling evidence arises when we examine outputs. Positive outcomes from police investigations, across crime types, have fallen dramatically. Analysis by the Police Federation, based on official data, notes that positive outcomes have dropped from around 25 per cent a decade ago to about 11 per cent in 2024. Home Office figures for 2024/25 show that only around 13 per cent of all recorded offences resulted in a charge or other positive outcome, and that many investigations are closed very quickly with no suspect identified.

For serious violent and sexual offences, the picture is particularly disturbing. One analysis of Home Office data found that nearly 1.9 million violent or sexual offences in England and Wales in the year to June 2024 were closed without a suspect being caught or charged, around 89 per cent of all such cases. In the worst affected urban areas fewer than seven per cent of cases were solved. The State of Policing assessment by His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary has repeatedly concluded that too many forces are “struggling to get the basics right” of investigation, file quality and victim care, especially for violence against women and girls.

The same body’s more detailed inspection into crime investigation, published in 2025, describes forces overwhelmed by the volume of recorded crime, with increasing workloads, inexperienced investigators, and growing backlogs in digital forensics and safeguarding work. The result is that serious crime investigations are often delayed and inconsistent, even where national strategies prioritise them.

This does not necessarily mean that British policing is indifferent to serious crime. On the contrary, national and local plans devote significant rhetorical attention to knife crime, serious violence, organised crime and violence against women and girls. The problem is one of capacity and alignment. Forces must juggle resource-intensive serious cases with high volumes of acquisitive crime (theft, robbery and burglary), safeguarding responsibilities and demands from other public services. In that environment, it is unsurprising that some serious crimes are not investigated as thoroughly or swiftly as they should be.

Governance, priorities and the use of resources

International standards emphasise that police resources must be subject to democratic control and used efficiently in pursuit of clear objectives, especially the protection of vulnerable people and the prevention of serious harm. In Britain, there has been increasing debate about whether current governance structures and performance frameworks encourage that alignment.

Police and Crime Commissioners were introduced in 2012 to provide a single accountable figure locally. They are now to be abolished, with their responsibilities transferred to mayors and local council leaders, and with the government asserting that the change will save around £100 million, to be redirected to neighbourhood policing. The reform is presented as a way of pruning bureaucracy and strengthening the frontline, yet critics argue that savings are modest relative to the wider funding pressures identified by the National Audit Office, and that structural change may distract from the more difficult work of improving investigative quality and digital capability.

The current administration’s “Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee” and plans to recruit thousands of additional neighbourhood officers reflect a political judgement that visible patrol and local presence need to be rebuilt after a decade in which neighbourhood policing was widely judged to have been diluted. That judgment aligns with evidence that foot patrols in high-crime areas can reduce serious violence, and with public expectations. However from the perspective of serious and organised crime there is a risk that scarce officer time is drawn into highly visible but relatively low-impact patrol, at the expense of complex investigations, intelligence work and fraud or cyber crime, which are less visible but hugely damaging.

The Institute for Government notes that governments frequently add new priorities, offences and performance targets without removing old ones. This proliferation of objectives can lead to a form of strategic drift, where resources are spread too thinly across competing tasks. International guidance from UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) on crime prevention stresses the need for evidence-based strategies that concentrate resources upon problems that cause the greatest social harm, and for periodic review of resource allocation in the light of changing crime patterns. It is not clear that British policing, as a system, consistently meets that test.

Adequacy against international standards

Against the baseline requirements of international standards, the British police service broadly meets the formal criteria. It operates under law, within a democratic system, under multiple layers of accountability. Officer numbers and budgets, while constrained, are not at a level that makes basic policing impossible. There is ongoing investment in training, technology and oversight structures.

However the standards also require that law enforcement officials be adequately remunerated, that their working conditions permit them to uphold human rights and discharge their duties properly, and that the state provide enough resources to make the system effective in practice rather than just on paper. On those more substantive measures, there is strong evidence that British policing is operating at or beyond the edge of its capacity. High sickness and attrition, heavy reliance on borrowing and reserves, sharply falling outcome rates for serious crime and repeated official findings of systemic investigative weaknesses are all warning indicators.

Adequately resourced, or stretched and misdirected?

Whether one concludes that the British police are adequately resourced depends upon the standard one applies.

If adequacy is defined narrowly, in terms of meeting minimal staffing levels and maintaining basic coverage, then British policing can probably be described as just about adequately resourced in aggregate. Officer numbers and funding have recovered from earlier cuts, and there are plans for modest further growth. Relative to many countries, Britain maintains a professional, nationally coordinated system with substantial capabilities.

If, however, one measures adequacy against the more demanding standard implicit in United Nations norms and the European Code of Police Ethics, which require resources sufficient to ensure effective, timely and fair investigation of serious crime and the protection of vulnerable people, the picture is less reassuring. The system appears stretched, uneven and too often unable to deliver justice in serious cases. Resources are increasingly consumed by complexity, by the inheritance of austerity-driven gaps in infrastructure and skills, and by an ever widening set of expectations, whilst investigative performance in serious and harmful crime remains poor.

A reasonable conclusion would be that British policing is not grossly under-resourced by international standards, yet is certainly not resourced at a level commensurate with the volume and complexity of serious crime it is expected to manage. The more acute problem may be that existing resources are not consistently directed, structured or supported in ways that maximise their impact upon serious harm. The key policy questions, therefore, are less about simple headcounts, and more about how to reform governance, improve productivity and sharpen priorities so that scarce policing resources are aligned with the most serious threats to public safety.