Should the UK's 43 police forces be merged into larger regional forces?
England and Wales currently have 43 territorial police forces. In January 2026 the Home Office white paper From local to national proposed significantly reducing this number by merging them into larger regional forces, supported by an independent review to decide boundaries. The changes, part of the largest policing restructure since the 1960s, aim to cut bureaucracy and improve handling of serious crime while creating a new National Police Service for national threats.
4 Opinions
Crime is too high
Merging forces, properly administered, will reduce the number of senior managers, administrators and support staff, hence their costs. So increasing what can be spent on delivering local, front-line, policing.
Larger police forces will only divert funding and manpower into the cities.
Merging forces into mega bureaucracies will inevitably suck neighbourhood officers out of towns and suburbs to plug emergencies in major cities. We saw this exact failure in Scotland with local stations shut and responsiveness in the gutter.