UK Police Chiefs Pledge Officers Will Attend All Home Burglaries

British police officers on patrol in an undated file photo. Anthony Devlin/PA

Police chiefs in England and Wales have promised that their officers will attend all residential thefts, following the UK government’s call for a shift of focus from “symbolic gestures” to “commonsense policing.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said on Oct. 5 that chief constables will work to ensure the approach is implemented “as soon as practically possible.”

According to the NPCC, while some UK police forces already have a policy of attending all home burglaries, others only attend “where it has been established that there are evidential lines of enquiry or where victims are vulnerable or elderly.”

NPCC Chair Martin Hewitt said more burglaries should be solved if officers visit the scene.

‘Real Crimes’

It follows interventions by the UK’s new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who has told police chiefs that they should focus on fighting real crimes rather than making “symbolic gestures.”

The proportion of crimes in England and Wales that end with a charge or court summons has fallen since 2015, reaching 5.6 percent in the year to March 2022, down from 7.1 percent the previous year.

Last week, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC that the proportion of reported burglaries attended by an officer from the force has fallen to 50 percent.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman speaking during the Conservative Party annual conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham on Oct. 4, 2022. Jacob King/PA Media

In an open letter dated Sept. 23, Braverman said she expects the police to cut homicide, serious violence, and neighbourhood crime by 20 percent.

In her Conservative Party conference speech on Oct. 4, Braverman praised forces which are already promising to visit the scene of every burglary and said, “The law-abiding majority expect every force to investigate every neighbourhood crime—and so do I.”

‘Get Back to Basics’

During her campaign to become Conservative Party leader and prime minister, Liz Truss said the police should “get back to basics and spend their time investigating real crimes—murder, burglary, and serious violence, not Twitter rows and hurt feelings.”

According to a recent report by conservative think tank Policy Exchange, British policing has “lost its way,” as the public believe that the police are “more interested in being woke than solving crimes.”

The report, written by former Metropolitan Police officer David Spencer, said police should avoid behaviour such as “taking the knee,” which can “easily be interpreted by others as an expression of a partisan political view.”

In August, Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police said that officers have ended up being involved in “stuff which is just not a policing matter,” and that it is undermining confidence in the forces.

In May, the UK’s Chief Inspector Andy Cooke said officers should stay away from “the different thoughts that people have” and focus on serious criminality.

Lily Zhou, Owen Evans, and PA Media contributed to this report.