What does the pledge mean?

Labour’s 2024 election manifesto says: “Visible neighbourhood policing was the cornerstone of the British consent-based model. In too many areas it has been eroded, leaving the police a reactive service focused on crisis response, rather than preventing crime.

“Labour will introduce a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, restoring patrols to our town centres by recruiting thousands of new police officers, police and community support officers [PCSOs], and special constables. Communities and residents will have a named officer to turn to when things go wrong.”

The pledge, previously announced back in 2023 as the Community Policing Guarantee, consists of a number of initiatives aimed at helping people feel safe within their communities by increasing the visibility of the police. This is expected to help reduce crimes such as anti-social behaviour and shoplifting. It will apply in England and Wales, as policing in Scotland and Northern Ireland is devolved.

In December 2024, in a speech to unveil his “Plan for Change”, the Prime Minister provided further detail on the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee (NPG), saying it would deliver: “13,000 extra neighbourhood police, visible on the beat, cracking down on anti-social behaviour. A named, contactable officer in every community.”

Details released alongside the speech stated that “putting police back on the beat” would be one of the milestones the government aims to achieve by the end of the parliament, adding: “We will know we have delivered this when we have 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables in dedicated neighbourhood policing roles—demonstrably spending time on visible patrol and not taken off the beat to plug shortages elsewhere.”

As we wrote in December 2024, statements from the home secretary Yvette Cooper have suggested this overall figure of 13,000 officers will be made up of 3,000 new recruits, 3,000 existing officers who will be redeployed to neighbourhood teams, 4,000 newly recruited PCSOs and finally 3,000 additional volunteer special constables, although it is possible this breakdown could be subject to change.

This suggests fewer than a quarter of the 13,000 are likely to be new, fully-warranted police officers.

What progress has been made?

We are currently rating this pledge as “In progress”, as the government has announced funding for at least the initial phase of recruitment, as well as a timeline for establishing key elements of the NPG. However, doubts remain about whether there will be sufficient money available across the parliament to deliver the government’s crime and policing pledges in full.

A 17 December 2024 statement about the provisional police grant for 2025/26—funds for which became available on 1 April 2025—noted that £100 million had been put aside for the first phase of recruitment of “additional and redeployed neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and special constables”, with a view to increasing police visibility.

And in January 2025, the level of funding was doubled to £200 million, with the government stating the increase reflected “the scale of the challenges that many forces face”.

In April 2025 the government published the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee performance framework, setting out how progress on the NPG would be monitored. This detailed the five pillars of the Guarantee and its associated commitments:

1. Placing a Neighbourhood Policing Team in every local area to carry out visible and intelligence-led patrols.
2. Providing a named, contactable officer for every neighbourhood, responsive to local problems.
3. New training for officers to ensure neighbourhood policing is developed as a specialist capability.
4. New police powers to enable officers to crack down on anti-social behaviour (including the introduction of Respect Orders, a pledge which we are tracking separately).
5. A focus on tackling shop theft, street theft and assaults against retail workers so local residents can “take back their streets from thugs and thieves”.

The performance framework states that the NPG’s “key headline measure” will be the recruitment of 13,000 extra neighbourhood police, and that recruitment numbers will be published at a force level every six months. A range of other metrics will track wider progress on the “five pillars”.

Further details published in April revealed that the named officers for every neighbourhood, as well as a dedicated anti-social behaviour lead for every force, would be in place by July 2025, and that 3,000 additional neighbourhood officers would be in place by April 2026. The overall increase of 13,000 officers will take place by 2029.

In June 2025, chancellor Rachel Reeves published the government’s Spending Review, which included an average increase of 2.3% a year in real terms in “police spending power” until 2028/29, which she said was the equivalent of an additional £2 billion.

However, it’s worth noting that police budgets comprise a mix of central government grants and local council tax receipts, meaning some of this funding is expected to be funded by increases in council tax precepts. In addition, this increase in policing budgets takes place across the Spending Review period, which started in 2023/24, not the current year.

Senior police chiefs have raised concerns that this settlement is insufficient to meet the pledge of 13,000 new neighbourhood officers, with National Police Chiefs’ Council chair Gavin Stephens saying: “The amount falls far short of what is required to fund the Government’s ambitions and maintain our existing workforce.”

He added that the increase would “cover little more than annual inflationary pay increases for officers and staff”. Similar concerns were raised by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.

It is also worth noting that while the Spending Review included an increase in police budgets, overall Home Office spending is expected to decrease by 1.7% a year. Campaigners have warned this could also hamper other key government pledges on crime, such as halving violence against women and girls in a decade.