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 third pillar, “Clear performance standards and professional excellence”, pledged: “New training for officers and standards for professional excellence will ensure neighbourhood policing is developed as a specialist policing capability.”

The framework says that the “headline measure” the government will use is the total number of the policing workforce completing Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP) portfolios in their communities.

It’s not clear, however, whether this pledge simply commits the government to establishing the new training, or whether it has a specific target for the number of police personnel to complete the training by the end of the parliament. We’ve asked the Home Office for clarification.

What progress has been made?

The first part of the Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP1) was rolled out to all police forces in England and Wales in June 2025, following a year-long trial involving officers from 11 forces.

The College of Policing says that the full training programme, which will consist of four parts (NPP 1-4), is expected to be available by 2027.

Information on the number of officers to have completed NPP portfolios in their communities is not yet publicly available, however, and as mentioned above, we don’t know how the government itself is measuring whether its achieved this pledge.