Federation welcomes Home Office pledge to slash red tape

14 April 2023

West Mercia Police Federation has welcomed proposals to cut the amount of time officers waste on admin and bureaucracy.

Policing minister Chris Philp said a planned shake-up of the way crimes are logged would mean officers were no longer required to record frivolous allegations of offensive speech or social media rows as crimes.

He said his planned reforms would also bring an end to duplication in recording crime, ensuring that multiple offences for a single incident can in future be recorded under one principal offence.

Steps would also be taken to reduce the number of hours police spent dealing with mental health cases or filling in for other emergency services.

Mr Philp unveiled the proposals in a speech at the Law Society in London in which he said officers were not the “thought police” and that being rude or insulting should not be treated as a “police matter”.

He said changing Home Office counting rules on how reported incidents were logged would slash “unnecessary red tape” and free up more time to investigate crime.

And he accepted that police officers should not be expected to deal with mental health cases or act as a stop gap for other emergency services.

West Mercia Police Federation secretary Pete Nightingale said: “Ministers have made it clear they want officers back on the beat doing what they do best at the heart of the communities but our members can’t do that if they are stuck behind a desk so this commitment to reduce red tape is important.

“The amount of paperwork and admin our members face has become unsustainable because it leaves very little time for anything else so something has to change.

“This would certainly be a step in the right direction and we look forward to seeing the new measures introduced in the very near future.

“As always the proof of the pudding is in the eating but we broadly welcome the measures outlined in the policing minister’s speech.”

The proposed shake-up follows recommendations from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) which said a review of productivity found an estimated 443,000 officer hours were spent filling in forms and dealing with unnecessary admin - the equivalent to attending 220,000 domestic abuse incidents or 270,000 burglaries.

In his speech, Mr Philp said: “We’re going to make clear that frivolous allegations of malicious communications should not be recorded as a criminal offence unless the criminal threshold has clearly been met.

“We don’t think that being rude or insulting is a police matter.

“Officers are not the thought police and where something is reported that doesn’t meet the criminal threshold, we don’t want that to be investigated or reported as a crime. We don’t want to waste police time on that kind of thing."

The Home Office said the changes would save police time by no longer recording cases of messages that may offend someone or where a public disturbance occurred but has been resolved.

A spokesman said ministers believed officers should be on the streets investigating crimes such as burglary rather than investigating comments made online.

NPCC chair Gavin Stephenson said: “Police officers must be totally focused on keeping people safe and ensuring they feel safe.

“We want to provide the best possible policing to the public and the work of the police productivity review is aimed at removing barriers and improving effectiveness.”