This Government is introducing comprehensive policing reforms to strengthen neighbourhood policing and ensure forces have the capability to respond to the crimes that matter most to their communities, including in rural areas.

Through the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, every community, rural or urban will have named, contactable officers and stronger local policing presence, with forces supported to deliver an additional 13,000 neighbourhood policing personnel across England and Wales. Local forces retain flexibility to determine the workforce needed to meet their specific crime demands.

Alongside this, we are strengthening specialist national capability. We are providing over £800,000 of funding to the National Rural Crime Unit and National Wildlife Crime Unit this financial year. These units provide specialist operational support to police forces, improve coordination and partnership working, and share best practice across the country.

The National Rural Crime Unit plays an important role in supporting forces to tackle organised criminality affecting rural communities, including theft of machinery and livestock. By improving coordination across forces and partners and supporting targeted operations, the Unit is strengthening the collective response to serious and organised crime and helping to disrupt the criminal networks that operate across regional and national borders.

Together, these reforms and specialist capabilities ensure police forces are equipped to maintain and strengthen their response to rural crime, including tackling the organised criminal networks that drive it.

The National Police Service will take on the range of operational functions that currently sit with lead forces, coordinated through the NPCC. The Government will work closely with the NPCC on the transition of these functions.

This Government recognises the excellent work of the National Wildlife Crime Unit and the National Rural Crime Unit. The NWCU and the NRCU play key roles in helping police across the UK tackle organised theft and disrupt serious and organised crime groups.

This financial year the Home Office has provided a funding boost of over £800,000, which will allow these specialist units to continue their work in tackling rural and wildlife crime which can pose unique challenges for policing given the scale and isolation of rural areas.

The NWCU employs five police officers and thirteen civilian staff and the NRCU employs two police officers and six civilian staff members.

Defra does not provide financial allocations to local partnerships for tackling wildlife crime but instead provides funding directly at the national level, to the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU), and in 2025/26 is providing £424,000. Home Office, similarly, does not provide financial allocations to local partnerships. Home Office provides funding directly at the national level. In 2025/26 the Home Office has provided the NWCU with £450,000 and the National Rural Crime Unit with £365,000.

Chief Constables have operational independence to tackle the crimes that matter most to their communities; these decisions will inform the support that they request and receive from the units in question.

The National Rural Crime Unit is a specialist unit, and its activities exemplify the importance of collaboration in this area, involving farmers, policymakers and police working together at national and local level to examine how UK farming businesses can be better protected against crime.

The National Rural Crime Unit has recovered stolen property, including agricultural machinery and vehicles, worth £10 million since 2023. It has also co-ordinated operational responses across the UK that resulted in multiple arrests as well as disrupting organised crime groups.

Official figures are not held on the number of instances of violent crime or intimidation related to hare coursing or poaching. Hare coursing or poaching are not crimes which the police are required to notify to the Home Office. However, where violence or intimidation is used in connection with an incident of hare coursing or poaching this would be recorded under the relevant violence against the person or public order offence classification. However, it is not possible to separately identify those that are connected to hare coursing or poaching in the data held centrally by the Home Office.

It is standard practice for primary legislation to be subject to a post-implementation review after sufficient time has passed to assess its impact.

The National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) Wildlife and Rural Crime Strategy aims to target hare coursing through better preventative action, improved intelligence, and enforcement activity.

The Government is committed to driving down rural crime and the Home Office continues to work closely with the National Rural Crime Unit to help ensure an effective police response to rural crime.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on crime against business, including the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector, as part of the Commercial Victimisation Survey. Such crimes will also form part of the published police recorded crime statistics. However, neither of these data sources provides detail on the specific items stolen from vehicles or the methods used in committing theft.

The Home Office has not made an assessment on the prevalence of the use of drones. However, we work closely with the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) National Rural Crime unit and Opal, the national analysis unit for serious organised acquisitive crime, to understand the methods used by criminals to steal agricultural machinery.

The NPCC has established a new National Rural Crime Unit (NCRU) to support forces nationally in their responses to rural crime, such as the theft of farming or construction machinery, livestock theft, rural fly tipping, rural fuel theft and equine crime.

In June 2023 the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched the Unleashing Rural Opportunity, setting out four broad priorities that are key to rural communities being able to thrive. As part of this launch, it was announced that the Government will provide one-off funding for the NRCU. This funding will support work to cut crime and keep communities safe, by tackling anti-social behaviour and equipment theft.

DEFRA is also providing funding to the NRCU for a new role to tackle fly-tipping across Great Britain.