NEWS
• Operational pressures and changing crime types: Forces face complex threats such as organised crime,
cyberenabled offending, violence against women and girls that require specialist skills and time to investigate, yet resources are being diverted to meet immediate demand.
not been matched by retention strategies that keep experienced officers in post. The NPCC’s workforce and retention frameworks acknowledge the need for coherent attraction, progression and wellbeing strategies.
public. That contact is the lifeblood of community intelligence the informal, everyday information that flags emerging problems long before they escalate. Fulltime officers, special constables and neighbourhood officers bring varied dynamics to policing strategy because
human terms and that cost is reflected in the statistics.
“As our Copped Enough campaign makes clear, headline recruitment targets are not enough. Policing needs a coherent national plan.”
The result is a churn that eats institutional memory: when experienced detectives and neighbourhood officers leave, so does the local knowledge that prevents repeat victimisation.
THE HUMAN COST: POLICING AND COMMUNITIES Fewer officers mean fewer routine contacts between police and the
they live and work in the communities they police. This loss of embedded knowledge weakens prevention and hands the initiative to offenders. There are also acute wellbeing
consequences inside forces. Recent reporting and sector investigations have highlighted a worrying rise in mentalhealth harms among serving and former officers; the cumulative exposure to traumatic incidents is a major driver of early exits and longterm sickness. The policing family is paying a heavy price in
GOVERNMENT INACTION: POLICY DRIFT AND POLITICAL RISK The Home Office has announced recruitment targets and occasional funding uplifts, but the evidence suggests policy responses have been piecemeal and reactive rather than strategic. The workforce data show that shortterm recruitment campaigns cannot substitute for longterm retention, career
development and wellbeing investment. The failure to address root causes – pay, workload, training and mentalhealth support, amounts to policy drift at a time when policing needs clarity and sustained investment. To put it bluntly: the Government has
not halted the attrition. Recruitment drives bring new officers in, but without meaningful retention measures the service is left in a revolvingdoor cycle that erodes capability and public confidence. “We are losing skilled and valuable
13 | POLICE | FEBRUARY | 2026
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