The landscape in which we police has changed radically in recent years but HMIC finds that police have so far risen substantially to the challenge

ACPO President Sir Hugh Orde said:

“The police service is always reforming, learning from the past and adapting to the threats of the day.

“The landscape in which we police has changed radically in recent years but HMIC finds that police have so far risen substantially to the challenge.  How we continue to evolve at a local, national and international level to keep people safe is at the forefront of police leaders’ minds.

“Police chiefs have made fundamental changes in their forces to protect the frontline and continue to cut crime and deal with 20 percent cuts to their budgets.   We’ve improved our response to anti-social behaviour, got better at preventing crime in the first place and worked hard to make the police service more representative of the communities we serve.

“We are continuing to make changes at pace.  Adapting to cyber-crime is a challenge but we are working transform our response by recruiting people with specialist skills and training our own staff to prevent and detect those who seek to use technology to harm or steal from us.  We’ve invested in specialist investigators for sexual abuse and changed the way we work with other agencies to protect children; as a result of increased victim confidence in the police response we’ve seen an unprecedented increase in reports of sexual offences.  We are working to balance an increase in major historic investigations with dealing with the issues of today and tomorrow.

“We know there’s more to do and we are committed to doing it, working with the College of Policing, the Home Office and HMIC.”