Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to increase the number of police foot patrols.

Visible policing in local neighbourhoods is central to the model of policing by consent.

We are committed to delivering on the people’s priorities and ensuring that policing has the resources it needs; we have increased the police funding settlement by £1.1billion in 2022/23, and through the Police Uplift Programme, police forces in England and Wales have already recruited over 11,000 additional officers and are on track to deliver 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.

In Durham specifically, the police force has recruited 75 additional uplift officers against a combined year 1 and 2 allocation of 135 officers to be recruited by March 2022. The force has also been allocated a further 90 officers for the final year of the programme.

Decisions about frontline policing, and how resources are best deployed, are for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, who are best placed to make decisions with their communities based on their local knowledge and experience.