Police: Finance
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of ending core grant funding for Regional Organised Crime Units on the ability of police forces to tackle organised crime, county lines and violent offending.
Answered by Sarah Jones
Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) are a critical part of the national policing response to tackling serious and organised crime and that will remain the case. Their maturity and performance reflect years of sustained cross-force commitment, and we want to build on this.
The Police Reform White Paper set out a comprehensive programme to improve the quality, consistency and effectiveness of policing, spanning both the national and local tiers. At the national level, this includes the establishment of a National Police Service to strengthen the response to terrorism and serious organised crime, by bringing together nationally facing functions delivered through the National Crime Agency, Counter Terrorism Policing and ROCUs.
Total funding to police forces will be up to £18.4 billion, an increase of up to £834 million compared to the 2025-26 police funding settlement. This equates to a 4.7% cash increase and a 2.7% real terms increase in funding. For this financial year, alongside the contributions PCCs make through the wider police grant, the Home Office is providing significant programmatic funding to support key ROCU capabilities to tackle serious and organised crime.
Furthermore, as part of this broader investment in policing capability, we are investing more than £34m this financial year (26/27) in the County Lines Programme, to target exploitative drug dealing gangs whilst breaking the organised crime groups behind this trade.
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