After a break of eight years, the 20th Oxford Policing Policy Forum was convened at All Souls College, Oxford on 12th May 2025. With a Home Office white paper in preparation and a significant police reform programme expected to follow, the Forum focused on ‘Police reform: lessons from the past and prospects for the future’.
This report provides a thematic commentary of the short framing presentations provided and the conversations that arose.
With pressing concerns about finances, police performance and public confidence, participants agreed that while police reform is difficult it is urgently needed. The Forum reflected on previous attempts at structural reform and lessons learned, including the 2005 police force mergers programme and the creation of Police Scotland.
Emerging key messages were:
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Be clear on what you want to achieve most
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Do not pass up the opportunity to be truly transformative
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Seek to renew the police-public relationship, but be wary of underfunded promises and an over-emphasis on police numbers
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Anticipate unintended consequences
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Recognise policing’s system interdependencies
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Think beyond structures to the wider enablers of police capability on which improvement will also depend.
