What does the pledge mean?

The government’s Plan for Change, published in December 2024, promised to “deliver the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee and put 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles”.

This builds on the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment to “introduce a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, restoring patrols to our town centres by recruiting thousands of new police officers, police and community support officers [PCSOs], and special constables”.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee (NPG) performance framework was published in April 2025. It states: “The key headline measure for the NPG is the recruitment of 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles.”

The framework says this will be delivered by the end of the current parliament in 2029, and that progress towards the target will be measured using biannually-published Home Office statistics.

In February 2026, the government said the baseline for measuring progress towards this target was set as the total number of full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers and police community support officers (PCSOs) in neighbourhood policing (NHP) roles as at 31 March 2025.

This figure on this date was 17,175 (made up of 11,104 FTE police officers and 6,071 FTE PCSOs). That means that to have achieved this pledge, the number of FTE police personnel in NHP roles must be at least 30,175 by the end of this parliament.

Police personnel in training who are destined for an NHP role will be included in the growth figures, as well as personnel deployed into neighbourhood policing from other roles. Policing is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so this commitment applies to the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales. It does not include the British Transport Police.

We’re monitoring the government’s progress towards the other aims set out in the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee separately.

What progress has been made?

We’re currently rating this pledge as “appears on track”.

The government’s target for the first year of the pledge (1 April 2025-31 March 2026) was an increase of 2,972—consisting of 2,584 police officers and 388 PCSOs. It also set a target of 301 additional special constables (on a headcount basis).

Ad-hoc figures published in April 2026 showed that as at 28 February 2026, the number of FTE personnel in NHP roles had increased by 3,123.

This means that in the first ten months since the NPG was launched the government has achieved 24% of the total 13,000 increase, and surpassed the target increase for the first financial year.

The government has not yet published NHP figures for special constables—the Home Office told us in April that these figures would be included in a July workforce release.

It’s worth noting the latest figures show that between the NPG being launched and September 2025 the total number of police officers and PCSOs decreased, by 0.6% and 1.4% respectively, even though the number of personnel in NHP roles increased over the same period.