Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to support local police forces to help them to deal with complaints backlogs.

The Government implemented a series of legislative reforms in 2020 to the police complaints and disciplinary systems. These changes were designed to achieve a simpler, more proportionate, and customer-focused complaints system focused on learning and improvement.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) collects and publishes information from all police forces in England and Wales about the type of complaints they are receiving and how long they take to deal with them. The most recent police complaints statistics report can be found here:

https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/research-and-statistics/police-complaints-statistics

From the most recent publication (2022/23) the IOPC note that “more complaints are being sorted quickly, as the new system intended, with fewer complaints resulting in lengthy investigations. This is to be welcomed. In many cases these are being replaced with responses that are more proportionate with appropriate explanations and apologies.”

The IOPC, Home Office and wider policing sector are continuing to work with forces to seek to improve their handling of police complaints. The Home Office will also continue to collect, review and publish data annually on police complaints, conduct matters and recordable conduct matters.