Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to tackle burglaries in Solihull constituency.

Crime Survey for England and Wales data shows a 57% per cent fall in domestic burglaries when comparing the year ending June 2023 with year ending March 2010 Crime Surveys; representing a fall from 917,000 to 394,000 incidents. This is clearly good news; however, we recognise the significant impact invasive crimes such as domestic burglary can have on individuals and the wider community, and we are committed to tackling and preventing these crimes.

The public want to know the police will visit them when a home burglary has been committed, which is why we welcome the announcement made by the National Police Chiefs’ Council on the 8 June that all 43 police forces in England and Wales have been implementing this policy since March last year. We are working with police leaders to ensure forces are making their attendance data available to the public. https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/police-now-attending-scene-of-every-home-burglary

The police commitment to attend home burglaries is supported by specific College of Policing good practice guidance on conducting residential burglary investigations. https://www.college.police.uk/guidance/residential-burglary Setting the standard in respect of the initial response and the subsequent investigation, the guidance sits alongside the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice on Investigations.

As part of this back-to-basics approach, police forces across England and Wales have committed to pursue all lines of enquiry where there is a reasonable chance it could lead them to catching a perpetrator and solving a crime. This commitment, announced on 28 August, has been worked up and agreed by the Home Office, in tandem with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pursuing-all-reasonable-lines-of-enquiry-letter-to-police-leaders/pursuing-all-reasonable-lines-of-enquiry-letter-to-police-leaders

To help ensure the police have the resources they need to fight crime and tackle anti-social behaviour, we have delivered on our commitment to recruit 20,000 additional police officers by the end of March 2023.As of 31 March, a total of 20,947 additional officers had been recruited across England and Wales through the Police Uplift Programme (PUP), raising the number of police officers in England and Wales to 149,566, the highest number on record since comparable records began.

As a result of the PUP, on 31 March 2023 West Midlands Police Force had a headcount of 8,067 police officers, an increase of 1,376 additional officers against the baseline (6,691) at the start of the PUP.