Innovation and improvement

1.21 Home Office has ambitions to further develop these statistics. The statistics team is currently thinking about the legacy of the uplift statistics and what it will continue to publish on a regular basis after March 2023, when the programme ends. Some users we spoke to are keen to see the continuation of the uplift statistics in some form. They would like to monitor whether police forces are retaining the additional 20,000 officers, and therefore, whether the uplift programme has delivered a long-term boost to the police workforce. It is good that the statistics team intends to run user engagement sessions to understand which aspects of the statistics are needed most. It should continue to be transparent with users about future developments.

1.22 These statistics are delivering a lot of public value already. To further enhance the value for all users of police workforce statistics and maximise the benefits of improvements, Home Office should apply the lessons learned from the uplift statistics to all police workforce statistics. Continued improvement of the quality of the protected characteristics data is particularly important, as this is the aspect of the uplift programme we think has added the most value long-term. We are pleased that there is a central NPCC working group that will be taking forward this work after the uplift programme ends.