What the future holds...

Former Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal summarises his three suggestions for helping the ailing police force if increased budgets cannot be found.

1 We need to increase the number of special constables across the country. We should recruit thousands more on a voluntary basis.

We already have them – but not nearly enough. This way we could address the issue of visibility of police on our streets. We should recruit university graduates.

2 We could save tens of thousands of pounds by training more police to specialise.

More than half of crime now is either online or indoors – including crimes like domestic abuse.

These need specialists, because without them, cases fall down in court because they have not been properly prepared.

Every acquittal is costly.

3 At the moment we have 43 forces across the country, each with a chief constable, a deputy and so on. These senior managers are duplicated in each and are the most costly.

If we could save money at the top we could reinvest that in officers on the ground.

And by regionalising like Scotland we could both slim down that top layer and help intelligence sharing within a region.