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The Home Office is planning to discontinue the Officer Maintenance Grant, a funding mechanism that provided financial support to police forces based on meeting officer headcount targets. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has informed police chiefs across England and Wales that this grant will be replaced by ringfenced funding specifically aimed at neighbourhood policing officers. The original grant was introduced under Boris Johnson’s administration in 2019 to help fulfill the Conservative Party’s manifesto promise to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by 2023.
Although the recruitment target was achieved, the current Labour government argues that the grant inadvertently resulted in an increasing number of officers being assigned to non-frontline roles, such as administrative and back-office functions, rather than community-facing policing duties. Between March 2024 and March 2025, the police force experienced its first year-on-year decline in officer numbers since 2018. Additionally, police leadership has expressed concerns about meeting Labour’s pledge to recruit 13,000 more officers by 2029.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp criticized the Labour government after this decline, highlighting that the Conservatives had left behind record police numbers in March 2024. He stated, “It is staggering Labour has now presided over a fall of 1,313 police officers already,” adding, “Labour has let down policing and has let down the public.” Government sources have also pointed out that since the grant’s introduction, there has been a rise in the number of trained officers working in roles such as human resources and IT support. A government insider criticized the previous Conservative austerity measures, saying they “devastated neighbourhood policing across the country with a decade of austerity,” which forced forces to fill office roles just to meet recruitment targets.
Looking ahead, Mahmood’s letters to police chiefs emphasize a record investment of £18.4 billion allocated to police forces nationwide. The period between 2010 and 2018, when the Conservatives were in power, saw a steady decline in officer numbers. However, the 2019 manifesto commitment reversed this trend, resulting in an extra 20,000 officers recruited by 2023 through the Officer Maintenance Grant scheme. The current Labour government’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee aims to position 13,000 additional officers within local communities by 2029. The strategy involves creating named officers for specific areas, focusing on crimes in town centres, and boosting police visibility in neighbourhoods.
Despite these plans, the Police Federation of England and Wales has voiced concerns about funding levels not keeping pace with inflation. Brian Booth, the acting deputy national chair, expressed worries about substantial budget cuts forcing forces into difficult decisions about which units or areas to reduce, sometimes resulting in job losses. He warned, “This, coupled with the fact police officers are leaving in their droves, does not bode well when it comes to achieving a target of 13,000 more officers in neighbourhood policing roles by 2029, in a way that is fair and not a postcode lottery.”
For the current financial year, the Home Office has allocated £270 million in ringfenced funding available only to forces that maintain their officer numbers. This grants system is slated for replacement with a new neighbourhood policing ringfenced grant designed to redistribute officers from desk jobs into community roles. Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, supported the change but highlighted the need for flexibility in staffing. He noted, “The absolute focus on police officer numbers has prevented policing from recruiting the specialist skills it needs to tackle crime effectively in the modern world,” emphasizing the importance of not only frontline officers but also specialists such as forensics analysts, cyber experts, and digital investigators in an era when approximately 90% of crime involves online elements
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