Officers will attend “all at home burglaries” for the first time, police chiefs from across the country have pledged.
The commitment is aimed at building public confidence in officers, the chairman of the National Police Chief’s Council has said, and has been signed by all 43 chief constables in England and Wales.
The move will see officers always make a visit to victims of burglaries, regardless of the location and the items that have been stolen.
“Some police chiefs have struggled to achieve attendance at all burglaries with limited resources and balancing an increase in complex and highly harmful crimes,” the NPCC’s chairman, Martin Hewitt, wrote in the Daily Mail.
“But burglary is invasive and can be deeply traumatic.
“We want to give people the peace of mind of knowing if you experience that invasion, the police will come, find all possible evidence and make every effort to catch those responsible.”
It comes a day after figures emerged showing forces have logged 1.76 million burglaries since 2017 and only 5% of those resulted in criminal charges or a court summons, according to the newspaper.
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In the last five years, an average of 774 burglaries have gone unsolved every day across England and Wales, it added.
‘We’re never going to turn up to every single crime’
The proportion of reported burglaries attended by an officer has recently fallen to 50% within the Metropolitan Police, with commissioner Sir Mark Rowley saying last week that it was unacceptable.
“We’re never going to turn up to every single crime, and the public understand that, but something as severe as burglary needs a proper policing response,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“It’s too serious an intrusion not to have somebody turn up.”
The NPCC has asked the newly-appointed Home Secretary Suella Braverman to help police chiefs focus more resources on solving crime, with a National Audit report in 2018 showing 64% of emergency calls were not about criminal offences.
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‘We want to focus more on policing – so do politicians’
Just 5.6% of offences in England and Wales in 2021/22 – about one in 18 – resulted in a charge and/or summons, down from 7.1%, or one in 14, in 2020/21, according to Home Office figures published in July.
“We’re asking government to seriously take on the vast widening of the policing mission. We want to focus more on solving crime. The public want the same and so do politicians,” Mr Hewitt added.
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In his article, he also called for a review of the crime recording processes, claiming the current system takes officers away from neighbourhood policing and causes “misleading” statistics.
“Right now, for crime recording purposes, a burglary of someone’s family home is treated the same as the loss of a spade from a shed. There must be a better way,” he wrote.
Finally, Mr Hewitt said police and government need to work together to agree a consistent standard of core police services, “with evidence and public priorities at the heart” of decision-making.
