King's Speech 2026: Police Reform Bill

Police Reform Bill

“My Ministers will push forward with significant reforms to the police”

● The Government is determined to restore the public’s trust in policing by
driving down waste, cutting bureaucracy and empowering officers to focus on
issues that matter most to their communities, turning around years of decline
in neighbourhood policing.

● The Bill will deliver the biggest reform to policing in decades, strengthening
local policing, improving standards, and equipping the police with the
technology and skills to keep pace with criminals and tackle rapidly changing
threats.

● It will create a police service that is more rooted in local communities and
focused on their needs, more coherent in the way it is organised, more
consistent in achieving high standards, and more capable in terms of its
workforce, technology, and use of data.

What does the Bill do?

● The Bill will:

○ Ensure responsive and accountable local policing, by making sure
that in every force there are Local Policing Areas headed by a senior
officer and responsible to the public for delivering the policing their
community needs. The Government will deploy more officers into local
neighbourhoods, tackling everyday crime and antisocial behaviour
impacting local communities. Local Policing Areas will form the
foundation of fewer, larger police forces, which will have the resilience
to manage complex investigations and deliver specialist services that
protect the public.

○ Create a new national police force, the National Police Service,
that will deliver a unified response to the most serious crime, set
stronger national standards, and ensure a more consistent service is
received by the public regardless of where they live. The National
Police Service will bring together the National Crime Agency, Counter
Terrorism Policing, regional organised crime capabilities, the College of

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 Policing and other national operational functions and specialist
capabilities.

○ Abolish Police and Crime Commissioners and put in place
successor arrangements. This will bring better outcomes for the public
and policing, promoting collaboration across services and driving a
whole-system approach to crime prevention.

○ Establish clear national priorities, from a more active Home Office.
Establishing a single set of ‘National Strategic Policing Priorities’ will
give policing clarity on core priorities, align policing towards a single
vision, and enable the Government to drive progress in halving
violence against women and girls and knife crime.

○ Set and enforce standards for policing to ensure that all police
forces across England and Wales are delivering high quality and
consistent services for their local communities. The new policing
performance system will provide greater grip and oversight of policing,
driving improvements to ensure the public get the service they deserve.

○ Establish a new legal framework to underpin law enforcement use
of facial recognition and similar technologies, making it clear when
use of these technologies can be justified, including creation of a
single, expert regulatory body to provide independent advice and
oversight. This will be world-leading and is essential for boosting public
and policing confidence in the use of these innovative technologies,
which has the potential to transform crime outcomes while also
generating major efficiencies.

Territorial extent and application

● The majority of measures in the Bill will extend and apply to England and
Wales.

Key facts

● The Government is already delivering for communities. Knife crime is
down, homicides are at their lowest levels in almost 50 years, and tens of
thousands of dangerous weapons have been taken off our streets.

● The Government will deliver 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing
personnel into roles across England and Wales by the end of this Parliament.

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 By February 2026, more than 3,100 additional police officers and police
community support officers had been delivered into neighbourhood roles.

● Neighbourhood policing has been deprioritised, leaving communities
exposed to crime, disorder and a declining sense of public safety, with
officers too frequently covering shortfalls elsewhere. The percentage of
people reporting that they never see the police or police community support
officers on foot patrol in their local area has risen from 25 per cent in 2010-11,
to 54 per cent in 2023-24.

● Overall confidence in local police in 2024-25 is 67 per cent, up two
percentage points from 65 per cent in 2023-24 and down 12 percentage
points from 79 per cent in 2015-16.

● Trust in police in 2024-25 is 71 per cent, up two percentage points from 69
per cent in 2023-24 and down nine percentage points from 80 per cent in
2015-16.

● The Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) model has not achieved the
connection to local communities that was intended. 41 per cent of the
public are not aware their PCC even exists.

● Police performance has declined and is inconsistent across the country.
In 2024-25 the proportion of people who thought their local police force was
doing a good or excellent job ranged from 39 per cent to 62 per cent across
England and Wales.

● The National Police Chiefs’ Council said “This is the most significant
change in policing in the last half a century, to get policing ready to fight crime
and protect the public over the next half a century. The current policing model
was designed in the 1960s. The postcode lottery of 43 police forces doing
things 43 different ways, alongside a complicated mesh of regional
collaborations, national agencies and funding streams, is both inefficient and
ineffective. The need for significant police reform has been there for more
than a decade and is now urgent, in a world where 90 per cent of crime has a
digital element. We are grateful to ministers for clearly listening to the views of
policing and putting together a package of ambitious and far-reaching
measures which reflect the voice of our service.”

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