What does the pledge mean?
In April 2025 the government introduced its Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee (NPG), as promised in both its 2024 election manifesto and its subsequent Plan for Change, published in December 2024.
The NPG performance framework, published in April 2025, consists of five ‘pillars’ based on the aims set out in the Plan for Change, each of which we’re monitoring separately.
The fourth pillar, “Crackdown on anti-social behaviour”, pledged: “Neighbourhood policing teams will have tougher powers, and be supported by other agencies, to tackle persistent anti-social behaviour. This includes piloting the new Respect Order to enable swift enforcement against prolific offenders, and a dedicated lead officer in every force working with communities to develop a local anti-social behaviour action plan.”
The framework set out three “headline” measures against which progress on this pillar will be publicly monitored:
- Proportion of the public that have experienced or witnessed anti-social behaviour (ASB) in their local area in the last 12 months, as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
- A dedicated lead officer for ASB in every force, in place by July 2025.
- Presence of ASB action plans in every police force, in place by April 2026.
We’re monitoring the government’s progress on introducing Respect Orders separately, which we’re currently rating as “appears on track”.
The framework also committed to producing a “dashboard” showing progress on these and other headline measures—we’ve asked the Home Office when this will be live.
What progress has been made?
We’re currently rating this pledge as “appears off track”.
In August 2025, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) confirmed that “every force now has a dedicated anti-social behaviour (ASB) lead”, fulfilling the second headline measure. In a press release published in June 2026 the NPCC said all 43 police forces in England and Wales had now published their ASB action plans.
However, in the year since this pledge was made anti-social behaviour, as measured by the CSEW, has increased. In the year ending March 2025, the last period before this pledge was made, approximately 35% of respondents to the CSEW reported experiencing or witnessing anti-social behaviour. In the year ending March 2026, it was 40.9%. The ONS said that some of this increase was genuine, but warned that it was also inflated “because of changes to how questions in the CSEW were asked from April 2025”.
