Thames Valley Police bidding for more bobbies on the beat

Thames Valley Police is making a bid for 58 more neighbourhood officers amid other ‘radical changes’ to its workforce.

Neighbourhood police officers are dedicated to policing a specific area, often focusing on community engagement.

At an RBWM place overview and scrutiny panel on Tuesday, Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Matthew Barber stressed the force has already doubled the number of neighbourhood officers in the Thames Valley.

Moreover, TVP has made a bid to the Home Office for a further 58 neighbourhood officers across the force, which if successful, Mr Barber hopes will be in place this year.

Other changes in the force include a ‘significant’ capital programme looking at replenishment of police stations and custody suites, plus a new forensic building in Oxfordshire.

This affects the whole of the Thames Valley and helps sift through both traditional forensics and the ‘incredible’ digital footprint for every crime.

Current facilities are ‘poor to say the least,’ said Mr Barber.

He hopes this will help TVP deal with the increased volume of crimes and will up its technical prowess, allowing the ‘highest quality’ evidence to come to the courts.

Chief Constable Jason Hogg also stressed the priority on neighbourhood policing.

Between April 2024 and August 2025, 10 per cent of all arrests in RBWM were made by the neighbourhood team.

“If I go to community meetings, the number one thing people say is: ‘We want you to be more visible,’” Ch Con Hogg said.

Last year, an independent survey heard that in the Thames Valley, 70 per cent of people surveyed said they had seen more police officers on the street in the past 12 months.

Ch Con Hogg then discussed some of the staffing challenges at TVP.

TVP has ‘more police officers than ever before’ but due to increases in population size, there are still fewer officers relative to the population compared to 2010.

Currently there are 5,674 officers in the force, including 263 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).

There has been some trouble with recruitment, Ch Con Hogg said – and in particular, the number of PCSOs is not where the force would like it to be.

Addressing a question about why neighbourhood officers seem to be moved on before fully getting to grips with a patch, Ch Con Hogg explained that this was a result of having too many vacancies, hoped to be mitigated by a restructure.

A restructure of the police force has been taking place over the past 18 months and is set to finish in May.

This has involved reducing 12 policing areas down to five.

The main reason is financial – it has saved millions, Ch Con Hogg said, by ‘taking out swathes of middle management.’

This is he ‘biggest review and restructure’ of the force since 2010. About £15.7million of savings are expected, with £7million already delivered.

“There are some really advantages – it allows a commander to move resources around more effectively. It’s much more borderless,” Ch Con Hogg said.

Windsor and Maidenhead was quite a small team once, he said, which could sometimes cause problems. Now police can corral resources ‘very quickly’ where they are needed.

There have been other ‘radical changes’ over the last four years, Ch Con Hogg added.

Thirty-five per cent of the workforce now have fewer than five years’ service and 70 per cent of people who have joined are under the age of 25.

But there are also more supervisors in frontline teams, more sergeants in the response teams, and more detectives in the child abuse and domestic abuse investigation teams.

Other changes TVP has been making is working on improving the time it takes to respond to 101 calls. TVP made a commitment by April to answer these calls within five minutes on average.

It is currently at 4.5 minutes, and for the past three months this has been 3.5 minutes – ‘and improving’.

One change that has been helping is a TVP app which gives automatic updates to victims of crime and lets them contact an officer via the application.