Restore Community Policing and Investigate Burglaries
Liberal Democrat · what the evidence says
An independent, source-checked look at Liberal Democrat’s policy “Restore Community Policing and Investigate Burglaries” — what it would actually do across the things that affect your life. Every claim below quotes the source behind it. How this works.
Public finances & the next generation — Hurts
minor · low confidence
The policy creates a statutory guarantee to attend and investigate all burglaries and restore community policing, both of which carry significant staffing costs, but no funding source is identified in the policy text. Without a credible funding mechanism, this adds pressure to public spending with an unclear fiscal path.
The evidence
- The policy creates a statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended and properly investigated, and commits to restoring visible community policing. — libdems.org.uk (manifesto) — “Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated.”
- IFS estimated that an increase of 10,000 police officers would cost approximately £300 million based on 2016-17 pay scales. — ifs.org.uk (institutional) — “The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated in 2017 that an increase of 10,000 police officers would cost approximately £300 million based on 2016-17 pay scales.”
- No direct OBR costing of this specific policy is available, making independent fiscal verification impossible. — gov.uk (media) — “direct costing of this specific policy from them isn't available”
Biggest unknown: Whether and how the additional policing commitments are funded — if matched by identified revenue or cuts elsewhere, the fiscal impact could be neutral or better.
Our reading: The policy text commits to two hard obligations: a statutory guarantee covering all burglary attendances, and restored community policing. Statutory guarantees are legally binding and operationally costly — they cannot be quietly deprioritised as budgets tighten. The IFS benchmark (£300m for 10,000 officers, 2017 prices) illustrates the scale of recurring staffing costs that significant policing expansion entails. A separate government programme has earmarked £100m for an initial phase of neighbourhood policing, which gives a rough sense of upfront cost, but the burglary-attendance guarantee is a much broader and harder commitment — covering every burglary across England and Wales regardless of demand. No funding source appears in the policy text, and no independent OBR or IFS costing of this specific commitment is available in the provided evidence. Under O12's framework, an unfunded, legally binding spending commitment worsens the fiscal position by creating a recurring cost without an identified revenue offset. The magnitude is minor rather than moderate because the absolute sums, while real, are modest relative to total public spending; the confidence is low because the absence of an OBR or IFS estimate means the true cost range is wide, and there may be offsetting measures not captured in this policy text alone.
Community cohesion & belonging — Helps
minor · low confidence
Restoring visible, community-focused policing has evidence behind it for rebuilding public trust and feelings of safety — but only if officers are genuinely deployed and engaged, not just on random patrol. Delivery is the big question: frontline officer numbers have already been declining, and aspirational language without confirmed resourcing may not translate into real change.
The evidence
- The policy commits to restoring visible, trusted community policing focused on preventing and solving crime. — libdems.org.uk (manifesto) — “Restoring proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes”
- The policy creates a statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended and investigated. — libdems.org.uk (manifesto) — “Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated”
- Trust and confidence in policing is described as being at an all-time low. — journalcswb.ca (media) — “trust and confidence in policing is at an all-time low”
- Visible patrol combined with community engagement and problem-solving improves public confidence, perceptions of crime, and feelings of safety. — college.police.uk (media) — “Visible police patrol, when combined with community engagement and problem-solving, improves public confidence, perceptions of crime, and feelings of safety”
- Neighbourhood policing builds trust and confidence, encourages crime reporting, and enhances feelings of safety within communities. — college.police.uk (media) — “Widespread international evidence suggests that neighbourhood policing builds trust and confidence, encourages crime reporting, and enhances feelings of safety within communities”
- Visible frontline officer numbers have fallen to approximately 67,000 from over 70,000 a decade ago, while back-office roles surged. — institute.global (media) — “the number of visible frontline officers has fallen to approximately 67,000, down from over 70,000 a decade ago, while the number of officers in back-office roles surged by 40% in the past six years to over 12,600”
Biggest unknown: Whether the promised officers are actually deployed in sustained, community-engagement-oriented roles rather than absorbed into back-office or response functions — without that, the trust-building mechanism does not fire.
Our reading: The evidence baseline shows a real and ongoing deterioration in the two O15-relevant indicators most directly linked to this policy: visible police presence has collapsed from 39% to 11% weekly sightings, and public confidence in local police has fallen from 76% to 67% over a decade. This is a genuine gap the policy targets. The mechanism is supported by credible evidence: neighbourhood policing — when combined with community engagement, not just random patrol — builds social trust, encourages crime reporting, and improves feelings of safety (E6, E7). These are direct inputs to O15's indicators of social trust and belonging. The statutory burglary guarantee adds a concrete, deliverable commitment that could restore confidence that reported crimes are taken seriously, which is relevant to trust. However, three constraints keep the verdict minor and low-confidence. First, random foot patrol is evidenced to have no crime or trust effect (E1) — the policy's aspiration for 'visible' policing only translates into O15 gains if the deployment model is community-engagement-oriented, not generic patrol. Second, frontline officer numbers are already down and back-office roles have grown sharply (E17), meaning the structural conditions for delivery are adverse. Third, the policy text is partly aspirational ('restoring proper community policing') without specifying officer numbers, funding, or redeployment mechanisms — the statutory burglary guarantee is the only hard instrument. Absent the policy, the trend is continued decline in trust and visibility. A real uplift in neighbourhood policing, if delivered with the right model, would genuinely move O15's social-trust indicators — but the delivery risk is high enough that only a minor improvement at low confidence is supportable.
Crime, justice & national security — Helps
minor · low confidence
Requiring police to attend and investigate all burglaries is a concrete new mechanism that could improve charge rates from a very low baseline, and neighbourhood policing has good evidence for improving public trust and feelings of safety. The main caveat is that generic visible patrols are not shown to reduce crime rates — only targeted hotspot-style policing is — so the crime-reduction effect depends heavily on how 'community policing' is implemented in practice.
The evidence
- The policy commits to restoring community policing with visible, trusted officers focused on preventing and solving crimes, especially rape and other violent crime. — libdems.org.uk (manifesto) — “Restoring proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes – especially rape and other violent crime.”
- The policy creates a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by police and properly investigated. — libdems.org.uk (manifesto) — “Creating a new statutory guarantee that all burglaries will be attended by the police and properly investigated.”
- Neighbourhood policing combined with community engagement improves public confidence, perceptions of crime, and feelings of safety. — college.police.uk (media) — “Visible police patrol, when combined with community engagement and problem-solving, improves public confidence, perceptions of crime, and feelings of safety.”
- Increased focus on attending and investigating burglaries could lead to improved outcomes. — ifs.org.uk (institutional) — “This suggests that an increased focus on attending and investigating burglaries could lead to improved outcomes.”
Biggest unknown: Whether 'community policing' translates to evidence-based targeted (hotspot) deployment or generic random foot patrols, which have been shown to have no effect on crime rates.
Our reading: This policy has two distinct components with different evidence profiles. The statutory burglary guarantee is a concrete, committed instrument — not merely aspirational. Current investigation outcomes are poor (E20 notes increased attendance/investigation could improve outcomes), and this mechanism is plausible to deliver marginal gains in charge rates and deterrence at scale. The confidence here is low-to-moderate because the guarantee creates an attendance obligation but resource constraints (E17 notes frontline officer numbers have fallen to ~67,000) could limit delivery. On community policing: the evidence is sharply two-track. Generic random patrols have no demonstrated crime-reduction effect (E1, E24); but neighbourhood policing combined with community engagement does improve trust and public confidence (E6, E7), and these have declined significantly from their 2011 peak (E8, E9). If 'community policing' means targeted problem-solving deployment rather than random foot patrol, the evidence supports a modest improvement in trust and feelings of safety — real goods under O5. If it means generic visibility, the crime-reduction effect is negligible. The policy text does not specify the deployment model, which is the crux of uncertainty. The direction is 'improves/minor' rather than negligible because: (a) the burglary guarantee is a real committed instrument; (b) neighbourhood policing does have population-scale evidence for trust improvement even absent direct crime-rate effects; and (c) the decline in visible policing (E8) means there is genuine room for a marginal improvement. Confidence is low given implementation uncertainty and the key gap between the evidence base (targeted hotspot policing) and the policy's framing (generic community visibility).