Police Reform at a Glance: Centralisation and a ‘British FBI’?

As policing faces a more sophisticated and resilient criminal threat picture, administrative and budgetary pressures have been deepening the policing crisis – and undermining public safety and trust. Recent RUSI research has confirmed the trend of growing criminal organisation and technological sophistication in some of the public’s most frequently encountered crimes. Criminal supply chains have evolved as organised criminals seamlessly operate across the UK and internationally. To give one example, fraud has surged, representing an estimated 41% of all crimes against individuals in the UK – the majority of which is cyber-enabled. Police forces have thus been stretched attempting to respond to the estimated 4.1 million annual fraud incidents, increases in acquisitive crime and anti-social behaviour while leading the country-wide focus on reducing knife crime and violence against women and girls.

The Case for Reform

Spread across 43 police forces, 9 Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs), the National Crime Agency (NCA) and a variety of specialist forces, structural rigidity has hamstrung an effective police response. To pursue crime across force lines, police leaders are faced with often self-defeating incentive structures. Likewise, the intelligence and vital information for investigations and crime prevention often remains in siloes along the decentralised policing architecture.

Fiscally, the crisis for UK policing appears existential. The Metropolitan Police continue to face ‘eye watering’ decisions to reduce police staff as pressure to fill budget shortfalls intensifies. The Met are not alone. In July 2025, MPs appealed to the Home Office to rescue Lincolnshire Police from bankruptcy, despite a previous 6.2% budget increase for the force. Across England and Wales in 2025/26, 37 of 43 police forces reported a budget shortfall – totalling £450 million. According to police forces’ medium-term financial plans, this shortfall is set to increase to £966 million by 2027. Forces are thus looking for ways to balance the books, all while demands across the system increase.

The under-resourced, inflexible policing system, faced with increasingly sophisticated and agile organised crime, has struggled to meet demand and public expectations. As of 2023, the charge ratio (number of charges divided by volume of recorded crime) lay at approximately 7%, down from 15% a decade prior. Charge rates for victim-based offences saw particularly steep decreases. Today, only 4% of British adults have ‘a lot of confidence’ in policing to deal with crime, and populist clamours of ‘lawlessness’ have become increasingly prevalent in public discourse – despite record lows in violent crime. It is in this context that the Home Office, under Yvette Cooper, launched the most significant reform of policing in 80 years. The objectives are three-fold: enhancing police performance, improving cost-efficiency and reducing jurisdictional and bureaucratic friction.

The ‘National Police Service’ and More

The headline reform announced by the Home Secretary is the creation of the National Police Service (NPS), which Ms Mahmood dubbed the ‘British FBI’. Operationally, the idea is that unifying organised crime investigations under the NPS will bring relief to police forces facing complex, resource-heavy investigations, particularly in smaller forces. Where local or regional forces lacked access to specialist capabilities – from digital to financial – a national body can now more efficiently deploy centralised expertise and technical resources. Likewise, for many investigations struggling across county borders, the proposed reforms may allow for expedient operations and information sharing.

Resource-wise, annual budgets for the NCA and CTP in 2024-25 were £670 million and £1.15 billion, respectively. Integration of the Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs), College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) may see a potentially significant NPS resource pool. However, these bodies are already stretched thin and a merger without additional resourcing does not immediately alleviate resourcing struggles. Any savings rely heavily on the underpinning assumption that scale equates to efficiency and that duplicate bureaucratic functions across newly merged forces can be cost-effectively eliminated. Savings may only materialise over time, as reform requires significant upfront investment and attention into operationalising more efficient systems. HMICFRS have previously warned that ‘central isn’t always better’, noting that procurement and national programmes for technology have routinely been ‘overdue and over budget’.

As many observers may recall, this is not the UK’s first move towards a ‘British FBI’. Near identical parallels were drawn at the launch of the NCA in 2013, Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in 2006 and the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) in 1992. The NPS is but the latest evolution of decades-long centralisation of organised crime investigations.

Beyond the announcement of the new crime-fighting superagency, the reforms include several commitments to improve front-line policing services and ensure modern capabilities across policing. The white paper puts local police performance at the forefront of the performance drive. This includes a commitment to improving local response times and prevent officer abstraction – where an officer is pulled from local patrols to fill operational gaps. Moreover, in the initiative to ensure officers are ‘free to focus on fighting crime’, artificial intelligence (AI) features prominently. The white paper announced the creation of the National Centre for AI in Policing, or Police.AI, which is set to receive £115 million over three years, enabling ‘identifying, testing and then scaling’ of police AI applications nationally, no longer relying on force-level uptake.

As with much of the planned reform, aside from hypothetical organisational or AI-driven efficiency savings, it remains to be seen how the government plans to resource and deliver on the expansive pledge to improve policing – ‘from local to national’.

More Questions than Answers

The white paper makes clear the government’s ambitious intentions to bring about a fundamental change to policing. However, the 106-page document leaves considerable room for manoeuvre. It also gives rise to questions on its implementation, resourcing and potential obstacles:

1. With forces collectively facing close to a £1 billion shortfall by 2027, it is unlikely reorganisation alone will result in meaningful fiscal improvement without being accompanied by significant investment. Likewise, reform processes are not net-zero on budgets and may require significant up-front costs. The plan seeks to reform the police funding formula but falls short of outlining a clear plan to address policing deficits.
2. What constitutes ‘local’ policing versus crime types fit for investigation by the NPS? As RUSI research highlights, ‘local’ crime often has a national – or international – dimension. Rather than inter-county challenges, a national-versus-local system may change, rather than remove, obstructive police territoriality. Moreover, should all local crimes with national dimensions be referred to the NPS, the national teams within the NPS risks acute case overload, and vice versa.
3. Policing is a single pillar in the criminal justice system. Other pillars, like the courts, prisons and mental health services are facing rising demand and dwindling resources. In strengthening policing without commensurate attention paid to reforming UK courts, prisons, probationary services and healthcare, well-intentioned reforms risk facing roadblocks left by crumbling sister-criminal justice services.
4. Amid resource constraints, individual officer and staff workloads have jumped, giving way to a veritable ‘retention crisis’ in policing. However, research indicates that poor internal organisational issues emanating from ‘a lack of voice, leadership, autonomy and support’ are behind the surge in policing turnover. In this regard, solving these issues is likely less a jurisdictional and fiscal issue than it is reflective of what has been described as a ‘leadership problem’.

The government’s road map to police reform can deliver vital change to a system, and the case for change is ironclad. Ultimately, as many expert commentators have noted, this latest effort towards police reform will hinge on leadership and delivery from across government and policing. With specific details, legislation and policies still to be decided, it is incumbent on the government to avoid cost-savings tunnel-vision, and to engage in earnest with experts to ensure the once-in-a-generation reforms are not rehashed in the following parliament.

© RUSI, 2026.

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