Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that police forces maintain specialist rural crime capability under proposed policing reforms.

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.