The Home Office publishes annual statistics on the total number of armed officers and operationally deployable armed officers (which excludes absences) in England and Wales in the “Police use of firearms statistics” publication. The latest data, covering the year ending 31 March 2026, can be accessed on GOV.UK (at the following link):

Police use of firearms statistics, April 2025 to March 2026 - GOV.UK

Data on the number of operationally deployable armed officers, by police force area, for the last 10 years are available in the accompanying open data tables at the link above. Data on the total number of firearms officers are available at the link above from 2021/22 and by police force area from 2022/23 only. Data on total armed officers were not collected prior to 2021/22.

Minister Jess Philips:

a.) 1, b.) 5

Minister Dame Diana Johnson:

a.) 1, b.) 2

Minister Seema Malhotra:

a.) 1, b.) 3

Minister Mike Tapp:

a.) n/a, b.) 8

Minister Dan Jarvis:

a.) 0, b.) 1

Minister Dame Angela Eagle:

a.) 2, b.) 4

Minister Natalie Fleet:

a.) n/a, b.) 0

Minister Alex Norris:

a.) n/a, b.) 17

Minister Sarah Jones:

• None, instead regular engagement in a variety of ways.

Minister Lord David Hanson:

• None, as he is not an MP.

Police forces are operationally independent from Government. Chief Constables and their officers are responsible for determining what action is appropriate in individual cases, including when information should be shared with relevant safeguarding partners, local authorities or other agencies.

The statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children sets out clear expectation that safeguarding partners must work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Practitioners should be alert to children showing signs of being drawn into anti-social or criminal behaviour and should consider whether a referral to local authority children's social care, or Youth Offending Team, is required.

a) Information has been provided for Home Office Arm’s Length Bodies that employ their own staff. The figures in the table below are as at 31 March 2026 and have been provided to the Home Office by each ALB.

b) The Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (PCSPS) and the Civil Servant and Other Pension Scheme (CSOPS) are unfunded multi-employer defined benefit schemes. Arm’s Length Bodies are unable to identify their share of the underlying assets and liabilities.

The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is a statutory obligation that applies across the public sector. As a procedural duty to have "due regard" to equality considerations, compliance is an on-going responsibility rather than a one-off task. It is integrated into the day-to-day development and delivery of all policies and services; as such, it is a core responsibility of all civil servants across government, rather than being restricted to dedicated personnel.

Because it is a continuous, procedural duty applicable to all civil servants, it is impossible to disaggregate the specific fraction of time or cost dedicated solely to Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) compliance versus general policy and operational work.

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) regularly reviews its operations and procedures to ensure they remain effective.

Current priorities are outlined in the DBS’s Business Plan 2026-27 and the DBS’s 2025-28 Strategy, including specific references to the use of innovative technology, improving information sharing and risk management.

With many individual workstreams underway, there are currently no plans to undertake a separate review of opportunities to strengthen and modernise safeguarding arrangements.

As set out in the published Impact Assessment accompanying the Immigration and Asylum Bill, detailed plans including costs for the new authority are currently being developed. Further information will be shared in due course.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a top priority for this Government. Our ambition is to halve the levels of these crimes within a decade. To do this we must take steps to reform the police response to VAWG, bring the police closer to the communities they serve and make sure we have the right policing in the right places.

We are committed to strengthening the criminal justice system and empowering victims with specialist support. This includes implementing specialist rape and sexual offence teams in every police force in England and Wales by 2029.

We have established the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP) to provide coordinated leadership on VAWG within policing, ensuring it is treated as a top priority alongside counter terrorism and serious organised crime. Backed by over £13 million of Home Office funding this year, the NCVPP will work with every force across England and Wales to drive consistent practice and support operational improvements through strengthened training for officers, updated national guidance, and targeted support to improve practice.

We are taking decisive action to revive our criminal courts and address long-standing issues that impact victims of VAWG. After commissioning Sir Brian Leveson to undertake an independent review of our criminal courts, on the 25th of February the Government introduced the Courts and Tribunals Bill. The Bill introduces measures to reduce demand on the Crown Court and modernise our court system, to ensure swifter justice for victims including victims of VAWG offences. It introduces a package of crucial reforms protect victims, particularly victims of sexual offences, from unnecessary and intrusive cross-examination about their personal lives at court.

The true scale of group-based child sexual exploitation remains unknown because of under-reporting, under-identification, and variations in data collection and analysis. However, data from the Centre for Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse shows that 15% of girls and 5% of boys are estimated to have been sexually abused before the age of 16.

The Home Office continues to work with policing colleagues to improve data collection and analysis to improve understanding of these crimes and to develop a more accurate understanding of victims and perpetrators.

We continue to support the Office for National Statistics work on the Safety During Childhood Survey, which will improve our understanding of the scale of a range of harms that children and young people experience, including child sexual abuse.

The Government’s police reforms will protect and strengthen neighbourhood policing by freeing local forces, including Thames Valley Police, from national responsibilities so they can focus on issues that matter most locally, like anti-social behaviour (ASB). Every police force in England and Wales now has an ASB lead in place who will work with communities, stakeholders and the general public to implement their individual ASB Action Plans, which were published at the start of April. Further information on the Thames Valley Police ASB Action Plan can be found here: https://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/asb/asb/antisocial-behaviour/antisocial-behaviour-action-plan/

Through the Crime and Policing Act, we are making our streets and neighbourhoods safer by strengthening the powers available to the police and other agencies to tackle ASB. Our new Respect Orders will give local agencies stronger enforcement capability to tackle the most relentless adult ASB offenders.

We are also strengthening the powers available to the police and other local agencies by increasing the upper limit for fixed penalty notices for breaches of CPNs and PSPOs from £100 to £500, increasing the time a dispersal direction can be implemented for from 48 to 72 hours and giving registered social housing providers the power to issue closure notices, amongst others.

This data is not held by the Home Office.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) is designed as a mission-critical communications service, with resilience built into its end-to-end architecture, governance and operational arrangements. It will provide police and other emergency services with priority and pre-emption over ordinary commercial mobile traffic, helping to maintain emergency communications during periods of network congestion or major incidents.

ESN has contracted for high levels of service availability and is working with delivery partners and cross-government resilience forums to ensure that ESN can withstand and recover from incidents affecting power, telecommunications and other supporting infrastructure.

Where telecommunications capacity is reduced, ESN users will be prioritised over commercial users. ESN resilience planning also includes enhanced coverage, resilient transmission, use of satellite connectivity for some remote sites, deployable coverage where appropriate, and contingency planning for severe weather and power disruption, including the deployment of at least 2000 additional generators for power outages. If, despite these measures, ESN coverage is unavailable in a particular area, users will be able to communicate using Tetra Direct Mode Operation, which does not rely on network coverage.

The Home Office has undertaken, and will continue to undertake, testing and risk assessment as ESN is developed and implemented. For security and operational reasons, it would not be appropriate to disclose detailed contingency arrangements or specific technical mitigations.

Additionally, individual police forces and emergency service organisations also maintain their own business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements for scenarios affecting communications infrastructure.

It is essential that every member of the police workforce has the consistent support and skills they need to become leaders who can thrive and continue to deliver for the public.

As part of our police reform programme, we will strengthen police leadership by mandating national leadership standards and reforming the process for appointing Chief Constables.

The College of Policing is the professional body for policing, responsible for setting standards, promoting good practice and supporting everyone working in policing to cut crime and keep the public safe. The Home Office provides funding to the College to support its functions including developing the National Centre for Police Leadership, and there are plans to deliver greater consistency and development in police leadership across forces while respecting operational independence.

The Police Leadership Commission’s report published on 6 July will inform our wider reform programme, helping us to understand how leadership is developed and supported across policing, where barriers to progress remain and what more can be done to strengthen leadership for the future.

We intend to publish a full Government response in the autumn.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of notifiable offences and their outcomes including community resolutions and cautions recorded by the police in England and Wales.

This information is published as official statistics each quarter. The latest information by force and offence type to the year ending December 2025, can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

Statistics to the year ending March 2026 will be published on July 23.

Information on out of court conditional cautions is not separately identifiable from Adult/Youth Cautions.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of notifiable offences and their outcomes including community resolutions and cautions recorded by the police in England and Wales.

This information is published as official statistics each quarter. The latest information by force and offence type to the year ending December 2025, can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

Statistics to the year ending March 2026 will be published on July 23.

Information on out of court conditional cautions is not separately identifiable from Adult/Youth Cautions.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of notifiable offences and their outcomes including community resolutions and cautions recorded by the police in England and Wales.

This information is published as official statistics each quarter. The latest information by force and offence type to the year ending December 2025, can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables

Statistics to the year ending March 2026 will be published on July 23.

Information on out of court conditional cautions is not separately identifiable from Adult/Youth Cautions.

The Home Office has written to the Animals in Science Committee setting out its phased approach to developing proportionate and evidence-based arrangements for decapods used in scientific procedures. As part of this approach, the Home Office is developing a roadmap setting out objectives and key milestones to enable the development of the evidence base needed to inform future policy decisions. The Home Office will publish further information on its approach to regulating decapods used in science in due course.

The initial phase of this work focuses on the adoption of industry-led welfare standards, supported by voluntary reporting, targeted training and preparatory work. Further steps may include seeking technical advice and engaging relevant experts where appropriate.

This activity is being undertaken using existing resources and budget. As of July 2026, the Animals in Science Regulation Policy Unit has 8.6 full-time equivalent staff who support a range of priorities including policy development for decapods. The Unit collaborates with a range of other government teams to progress project activity. Resourcing arrangements will be kept under review as the policy develops.

The Home Office has written to the Animals in Science Committee setting out its phased approach to developing proportionate and evidence-based arrangements for decapods used in scientific procedures. As part of this approach, the Home Office is developing a roadmap setting out objectives and key milestones to enable the development of the evidence base needed to inform future policy decisions. The Home Office will publish further information on its approach to regulating decapods used in science in due course.

The initial phase of this work focuses on the adoption of industry-led welfare standards, supported by voluntary reporting, targeted training and preparatory work. Further steps may include seeking technical advice and engaging relevant experts where appropriate.

This activity is being undertaken using existing resources and budget. As of July 2026, the Animals in Science Regulation Policy Unit has 8.6 full-time equivalent staff who support a range of priorities including policy development for decapods. The Unit collaborates with a range of other government teams to progress project activity. Resourcing arrangements will be kept under review as the policy develops.

As part of the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, the Government has committed to delivering 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of this Parliament.

By February 2026 we delivered 3,123 additional full-time equivalent (FTE)
police officers and PCSOs in neighbourhood roles since March 2025 as part of a drive to tackle the crimes that blight town centres.

This Government continues to support forces to increase the overall number of
neighbourhood policing personnel, with total growth expected to
reach 4,750 neighbourhood officers by the end of March 2027.

The Government’s police reforms will protect and strengthen neighbourhood policing by freeing local forces, including Bedfordshire Police, from national responsibilities so they can focus on issues that matter most locally, like anti-social behaviour (ASB). Every police force in England and Wales now has an ASB lead in place who will work with communities, stakeholders and the general public to implement their individual ASB Action Plans, which were published at the start of April. Further information on the Bedfordshire Police ASB Action Plan can be found here: https://www.beds.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/asb/asb/antisocial-behaviour/antisocial-behaviour-action-plan/.

Through the Crime and Policing Act, we are making our streets and neighbourhoods safer by strengthening the powers available to the police and other agencies to tackle ASB. Our new Respect Orders will give local agencies stronger enforcement capability to tackle the most relentless adult ASB offenders.

We are also strengthening the powers available to the police and other local agencies by increasing the upper limit for fixed penalty notices for breaches of CPNs and PSPOs from £100 to £500, increasing the time a dispersal direction can be implemented for from 48 to 72 hours and giving registered social housing providers the power to issue closure notices, amongst others.