Written evidence submitted by the National Police Chief’s Council Public Order (SDR0013)

Introduction

• This written evidence is submitted on behalf of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Public Order and Public Safety portfolio, engaging closely with Leads across the NPCC, National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC), and other national policing stakeholders.
• The safety of our communities is always the priority of policing. During the disorder following the fatal stabbings in Southport, many thousands of highly trained public order officers across the UK were on duty to protect communities and respond swiftly to instances of disorder.
• The senseless violence and destruction of communities by groups of violent thugs was completely inexcusable and policing responded quickly to arrest those suspected of involvement in violent disorder and worked closely with partners in Government and the criminal justice system to ensure that perpetrators of violence received swift justice.
• Every decision about how to police public order incidents is made by a highly experienced and well-trained officer, balancing the right to freedom of expression and the right to public safety, acting proportionately and impartially in upholding the law.

Overview of disorder

Protests and violence

• Following the initial Southport disorder on 30 July 2024, over 800 protests and vigils were reported to the national Strategic Intelligence and Briefing (SIB) team, sitting within the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC).
• Of those, 246 (30%) were confirmed to have taken place and 88 of these were assessed to have met the national strategic protest threshold, where they have the potential to cause impact in one or more of the following ways:
• Significantly affect community tensions
• Attract significant counter protest
• Cause a significant adverse impact upon the UK economy or national infrastructure
• Require the deployment of significant police resources

Investigation

• Police forces committed to delivering swift justice for those involved in the summer disorder.
• As of 13 November 2024, there have been:
• 1,711 arrests
• 1,041 charges
• 127 suspects identified using retrospective facial recognition.
• 340 suspects observed in footage who are yet to be identified.
• The highest volume of arrests took place in the north and centre of England and were primarily for public order offences.
• Forces with high levels of arrests and charges outside of the Metropolitan Police were Merseyside, Staffordshire, South Yorkshire, Cleveland and Greater Manchester.
• 99 (5%) of those arrested so far were because of online offences.

Demographics

• The people arrested were primarily under the age of 45 (86% of all arrests) and male (92% of all arrests).
• 15% of all arrests were juvenile males under 18, 23% were males aged 18-25, and another 23% were males aged 26-35.

National response structure

National bodies

• A range of national bodies work together to ensure national public order readiness. These are:

• This structure was established following the 2011 London riots, with the creation of NPoCC, the establishment of strong national coordinating command structures, and the creation of well-established and embedded mutual aid arrangements.
• Whilst these national bodies can support a nationally consistent response, command and operational response within each force area legally remains the responsibility of each force and respective chief constable, based on their judgement of the relevant incident or event.

Mutual aid and escalation

• Mutual aid is the process by which one force requests additional support to respond to an operational incident through the provisions of additional officers and staff from another force, to meet their capacity or capability needs.
• Mutual aid provision is a regular occurrence and is a well-established process within UK policing.
• Over each of the past several years, approximately 10,000 officers have been deployed on mutual aid, varying from single officers with specialist skills to thousands of public order trained officers as part of nationally strategic events, such as the King’s Coronation and the Commonwealth Games.
• Any operational response to local disorder will begin with individual forces and mutual aid from other forces can be requested as needed through a tiered escalation process.
• For mutual aid purposes, these tiers are:

• Please note that the majority of operations only ever require Tier 1 mobilisation, and when more resourcing is deemed necessary, frequently it is found that Tier 2 functionality is able to meet this demand.
• Every event must be judged by its own level of risk and potential for escalation, but pragmatically, forces will be guided by best practice and experience of policing past events. Before this summer’s activity, recent experience suggested that national mobilisation was unlikely to be needed with a similar initial period of disorder. See, for example, the Tier 2 response to the significant public disorder following the deaths of two teens following police pursuit in Cardiff, May 2023.

National response to disorder

Operation Navette

• Following the development of disorder outside of the initial small number of areas, a national strategy and structure was developed through Operation Navette to provide effective national coordination for the planning and response to demonstrations and disorder, as well as engagement and communication with forces, government and key national stakeholders. This included:
• A national Gold group established and led by the NPCC Public Order and Public Safety Lead.
• An intelligence coordination group led by the NPCC Intelligence Lead.
• The activation of the national mobilisation plan and the development of national strategic public order research, with NPoCC assuming a central coordination function for all public order assets across the country.
• Roles involved in the national response included:
• NPCC Chair
• National Public Order and Public Safety Lead as Operation Navette Gold
• National Mobilisation Coordinator
• Regional Mobilisation Leads
• Police force level command at Gold, Silver, and Bronze

Operation Navette Intelligence Oversight Group

• The Operation Navette Intelligence Oversight Group was established to bring together all the relevant intelligence functions in support of the national Operation Navette Gold Group, providing quick time updates on incidents of note from across the country, ongoing activity, and any developing intelligence of significance.
• Its purpose included deconflicting activity and ensuring shared situation awareness across relevant intelligence functions and across all levels of the public order system – local, regional and national.
• Membership of this group consisted of national policing and law enforcement partners, Regional Intelligence Networks and specialist NPCC Intelligence portfolios.
• The scale of the disorder necessitated the mobilisation of national assets including the Serious Organised Crime (SOC) network and Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCU), alongside Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) and the National Crime Agency (NCA).
• The work of these national intelligence assets was vital in our efforts to monitor and counter extreme political sentiment, as well as the rapid spread of disinformation and use of social media by both domestic and international agitators.
• National functions and regional structures were supporting the management of strategic threats, whilst forces continued to hold operational independence for the delivery of local operational responses.

National Intelligence Requirement

• The NPCC National Intelligence Portfolio set and published the National Intelligence Requirement for forces with the aim of understanding, identifying and assessing the level of threat and identifying intelligence gaps.
• This supported the development, assessment and sharing of intelligence for policing and wider partners relating to:
• Potential planned disorder
• Person’s intent of being involved in disorder or who have been involved
• Identification of enablers, facilitators, influencers, and content creators involved in organising or inciting criminal disorder operating in the real world or online space

Resourcing

• At the outset each affected force planned and resourced operations based upon their assessment of threat and risk in the local context. This included neighbourhood officers as well as public order trained personnel.
• Throughout the period of Operation Navette forces continued to mobilise neighbourhood policing resources alongside public order reserves. In many force areas these were sufficient and managed responses to protests and assemblies effectively.
• Despite the demands on our people, ‘business as usual’ policing activity never ceased; as always, responding to crime and maintaining public safety remained the top priority for all chief constables.
• For example, the period of disorder coincided with the start of the new Premier League season, and there was some speculation in the press that policing would be unable to commit its normal level of resourcing. However, forces, in conjunction with the UK Football Policing Unit (UKFPU), were able to mitigate risk to an acceptable level, and the weekend’s fixtures took place without major incident.
• Specialist resources stood up and made available included Evidence Gathering Teams, Dogs, Mounted, and officers equipped with less-lethal weapons including attenuating energy projectiles.
• Public order is the only area of policing which has specific capacity numbers set by the Home Office as part of the Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR), to ensure that police have the capability to mobilise 297 police support units (PSUs) to respond to public disorder.
• These PSUs are each made up of an Inspector, 3 Sergeants, 18 police constables and 3 police drivers, and in total equate to 7,425 officers able to be deployed.
• Each police force will consider the number of PSUs that are needed to be deployed based on local intelligence and judgement to respond effectively to any outbreak of disorder.

• To support Operation Navette, a national resourcing strategy was established following the activation of the national mobilisation plan. This was managed by NPoCC in support of the NPCC Public Order Lead as coordinating Gold.
• A national strategic reserve level of public order officers was additionally set across each region. This was a defined number of public order resources, on duty, that were ready for immediate deployment at regional or national level as required. This was a dynamic development of the national mobilisation plan and was effective.
• Situations involving the management of public order policing events and operations often involve a set of circumstances that are constantly evolving. Throughout the disorder, policing continued to adapt and innovate, in accordance with the Public Order Public Safety Authorised Professional Practice, which recognises the importance of officer discretion to resolve incidents, as long as those actions are lawful, comply with human rights and have been adequately risk assessed.
• Twice daily meetings were held with regional leads to provide national visibility of all on duty public order officers in each region, as well as twice daily reporting to NPoCC of the number of officers deployed in each force and region.
• This enabled movement of resources to be carried out as dynamically as possible across regions and support future planning to meet changing local and national requirements.
• 44,438 public order officer shifts were deployed to support Operation Navette between the 1st and 18th August 2024, making it the largest deployment of public order officers since the riots in 2011.
• Public order officers deployed per day during Operation Navette:

Learning

Capturing and sharing learning

• Tactical and strategic learning from operations is captured, shared and implemented through various means, from force debrief processes to national debriefs via NPoCC and the College of Policing.
• Forces started a formal debrief process as soon as they were able to, after the cessation of major disorder in their force areas. They conducted this work in conjunction with peer support from the College of Policing.  
• From a welfare and wellbeing consideration, the College of Policing also quickly initiated a national survey sent to all officers and staff who had been engaged with the operation.
• Recent examples of significant large-scale disorder were Leicester and Cardiff. Both of these events were subject to a thorough independently facilitated debrief, resulting in action plans in the relevant forces.
• Learnings from these events are also shared nationally through knowledge sharing events and national public order governance structures and conferences.
• These learnings are also collated by the College of Policing to be used as part of the development of Authorised Professional Practice (APP), tactics, equipment and training at all levels.
• The Gold command course was subject of extensive review during 2023/4, has been increased to 2 weeks in duration, and specifically updated in respect of experiential learning and how commanders develop and record their strategies.

Operation Navette specific learning

• Building on learning and good practice from previous major incidents, the Op Navette response included the early identification of recovery activity, enabling a seamless transition from response to recovery once disorder had been brought under control.
• To ensure learning from Operation Navette is collated, shared and implemented, the College of Policing are currently carrying out a thorough debrief of forces and officers deployed as part of the operation. The themes being looked at include around welfare, tactics, leadership, and equipment. The responses to this are currently being analysed.
• While this is ongoing, we have also been proactively supporting learning capture, engaging with HMICFRS, and making changes to operational policy to improve national responses.

Challenges

Intelligence sharing

• The spread of misinformation by individuals and group was a key factor in the serious public disorder seen following the fatal stabbings in Southport and a substantial challenge for policing. There is no one agency who has responsibility for monitoring media or social media for the impact on UK society.
• Within policing and law enforcement, Operation Navette therefore needed to engage with SOC networks, ROCUs, CTP Policing, and the NCA, in order to facilitate this aspect of our response.
• There is no dedicated national intelligence coordination team and capacity limitations within existing resources required the development of a new structure for this intelligence sharing across national partners and police forces.
• This resulted in the rapid development of the Operation Navette Intelligence Oversight group, led by the NPCC Intelligence Lead, and the publication of a National Intelligence Requirement for forces.

Retrospective facial recognition

• The use of retrospective facial recognition has been a crucial part of the rapid police response to the summer disorder by helping us to identify offenders through police force custody image databases, HM Passport Office, Immigration, and Interpol databases.

• However, there remain many of these offenders who have not been identified on these systems.
• Police currently lack access to the database held by the DVLA, and access to this would have helped during this investigation.
• While this is being looked at by the Home Office, where a national investigation of this kind occurs in future, police access to the DVLA database would help to substantially improve offender identification.
• This view has been supported by the Police Federation of England and Wales, representing the perspective of federated frontline officers.

Providing swift justice

• Swift justice is a crucial part of ensuring effective deterrence, alongside certainty that an offender will be detected.
• Communicating the impact of this activity was a crucial component of our overall communications strategy and something that we were able to collate nationally, and report to the media, at pace. On the 4 August, we issued this data for the first time, revealing that there had been 147 arrests, ranging from violent disorder to theft and antisocial behaviour.  By the 7 August, we were able to confirm that 120 people had been charged and 428 arrests made.
• This reporting mechanism continued daily until the end of the disorder period, with regular updates following. The most recent update to the media occurred on 29 October, and concluded that 1,590 arrests had been made, with 1,015 charges issued.
• As of 13 November, policing has made 1,711 arrests and with the CPS, made 1,042 charges. Of these arrests, 99 have been made related to online offences.
• Operation Navette continues to gather this data on behalf of policing, and we remain ready to proactively use it again as part of a behaviour communications and deterrence messaging, should we be required to.
• NPCC, forces and partners made the most out of opportunities to robustly communicate whenever criminal justice milestones were reached. For example, on the 15 August, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised the first riot charge in the wake of the unrest, in relation to a 15-year-old boy and disorder that took place in Sunderland. Rioting is a charge which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years prison, which is double the maximum that violent disorder carries. The CPS were quick to communicate that they expected more charges to follow.
• Our partnership with the CPS and the HM Courts & Tribunals Service had very real and tangible results:  for example, in Plymouth, the first offenders dealt with by the courts – who had looted shops and spat at police – were charged, convicted, and jailed within 72 hours.
• The first prison sentence for an offender who caused panic and chaos on the streets of Southport at the end of July was issued as early as 7 August, showing the stark consequences for those involved in disorder.
• This swift justice extended to those who used social media to incite or encourage violence. For example, the first person from Wales to be convicted and sentenced for offences associated with the disorder was an individual who pleaded guilty to sending menacing messages via a public communication. A man in Northamptonshire was jailed for encouraging violence online just two days after he posted on social media during the public disorder.
• Many of those prosecuted to date have been charged with violent disorder, under section 2 of the Public Order Act 1986. Additional charges include attempted arson, burglary or racially aggravated criminal damage.
• Hundreds of people have now been sentenced, with most sent to jail. There have also been criminal justice outcomes for ‘lower level’ offending, such as those which involve restorative justice (e.g. associated anti-social behaviour). Some individuals have received multiple sentences.
• A Rotherham man has been jailed for nine years in the longest sentence yet given. Thomas Birley added fuel to a bin fire and threw objects at police during unrest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers. A judge said that his case was “unquestionably” one of the most serious of the dozens he had dealt with.
• Forces successfully identified many suspects with facial recognition. By the 9 August, across the country investigative teams had scoured thousands of hours of CCTV, drone footage, body-worn video, and online content.
• At this time, policing ensured more custody cells and prison places were available so those responsible for serious disorder could be dealt with robustly.
• Currently, unless a suspect is considered dangerous enough to be remanded overnight to the next available court, 28 days are required by the CPS to make a charging decision during which time the offender will be bailed.
• The process for a charging decision, however, often takes longer than the required 28 days, and can extend to months. Maintaining engagement of victims throughout this process can be challenging.
• During Operation Navette, police were able to present key evidence to the CPS who could authorise charges within the 24-hour Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) custody time period.
• This process for ensuring swift charges should be considered for use more widely, which would help where national investigation on a similar scale occur in the future, as well as in other cases where a police investigation is completed within the 24-hour custody time period.
• Our work with the CPS provided a rapid process and saw hundreds of offenders placed before the courts within 24 hours of arrest. The CPS alone deployed over 100 additional prosecutors to assist at this time.
• Our efforts to arrest all identified suspects is expected to last until Easter 2025, accepting that a small number may never be located. It will quite probably be twelve months before all suspects who will be charged are charged, and given the backlog in the Crown Courts, it could easily be the end of 2027 before all contested cases are heard.  NPCC continue to nationally coordinate the investigations under the Recovery Gold.

Detentions and transfers

• The speed at which the operation developed left forces with concerns about the challenges of prison and cell capacity as well as the speed at which offenders could be brought before the court.
• Police are bound by Section 46 of the Police and Crime Evidence Act (PACE) 1984, which ensures that those who have been charged are brought before the first sitting court after the charge.
• Meeting this relied on being able to handover the remanded prisoner to the court, which depended on the capacity for either the police force, Prison Escort and Custody Service (PECS), or availability at the reception prison.
• In many forces, there is no specific capability to transfer prisoners, meaning any requirement on the police to transfer prisoners would take away from other response duties.
• Virtual Remand Hearings (VRHs) were one means by which forces were able to avoid breach of S46 of PACE, however this depended on local circumstances, such as availability of the technology and staff, again abstracted from the frontline, to act as ‘dock officers’.
• Potential breaches placed the custody Superintendent and officers in an unenviable position where they may have been required to choose between the legal risk of breaching S46 and bailing a violent offender.
• While the overriding priority remains to keep the public safe, it is important for this challenge to be addressed ahead of any future strategic operations.

Impact and recovery

Impact survey

• The NPCC carried out an impact survey following the conclusion of the summer disorder to help understand what impact this had on individual officers. Some of the headlines from this are included here.
• The majority of respondents said that their workload had increased up to 50% during Operation Navette and created backlogs in other work.
• Just under half of respondents were required to work on their rest days.
• Over half of the respondents felt a sense of duty to work additional hours to contribute to the policing of the operation when not on duty, however, very few respondents had to take sick leave as a result of the operation.
• Just over half of respondents felt that their line manager balanced the respondent’s welfare with the operational needs of the force, with a greater proportion of respondents agreeing that their line manager is concerned for their personal safety and welfare.
• Just under one fifth of respondents said caring responsibilities were considered when shifts and duties were rescheduled. Over half of these respondents said they felt under pressure to complete their duties without reasonable adjustments in place.
• The majority of respondents were aware of the physical and wellbeing support available to them through their force but less aware that this support was available through Oscar Kilo.
• Just over two fifths of respondents felt proud of the part they played in policing the disorder.
• Just under one in ten respondents experienced hate crime during the recent events and 16% of respondents experienced hate crime while carrying out their work.
• The majority of respondents agreed they had been fearful for some time that political tensions may escalate into a critical incident and eight out of ten respondents agreed they are fearful something like this may happen again with similar or other political tensions.

Officer injuries

• Work to understand officer injuries at a national level was undertaken during the summer disorder.
• Of the data returns provided by 35 forces, reported injuries showed:
• Total number of officers assaulted: 199
• Total number of officers injured: 127
• Total number of officers hospitalised: 69

Financial impact

• Work to understand the financial impact on forces is ongoing by the NPCC Financial Coordination.
• Initial figures suggest that the total cost to forces amounted to just over £28 million. This is made up of:
• Overtime costs for forces (including police constables and sergeants): £16.5 million
• Mutual aid costs (officers, transport, accommodation and other costs): £6.5 million
• Other costs (such as equipment, feeding and welfare): £5 million

Recovery and Cohesion Gold

• Following the initial disorder, an Operation Navette Recovery Gold Group was set up, led by the Local Policing Coordination Committee Lead, which remains ongoing.
• The purpose of Recovery and Cohesion Gold is to work with partners to achieve swift and sustainable recovery for those communities affected directly or indirectly by disorder. Focussing on efforts building on the broader public commitment to cohesion and tolerance to achieve enhanced community unity.
• The plan is to reassure vulnerable individuals, communities and organisations, through full engagement, ensuring that the voices of our communities are heard within the recovery process via active engagement activity.
• It is focused on:
• Mitigating challenges through the production of better-quality Community Tension reporting.
• Developing and activating community assets to support improvements in cohesion, through for example the Community Cohesion Practitioners Toolkit.
• Ensuring on-going costs recovery remains a focus.
• Supporting on-going investigation work streams.
• Supporting the HMICFRS and College of Policing review process.
• Working with NPoCC to scan for trigger events that are positively connected to the Southport disorder.
• Work with cross-Government departments to assure a partnership approach to community cohesion.
• Preparing for any return from the recovery phase to response.
• Police officers and staff will be at the forefront of preventing crime and disorder whilst providing visible reassurance to communities, often responding at speed to new and developing issues.  However, policing should not be expected to step into the community cohesion space beyond our core roles and functions, to mitigate structural gaps where these exist either locally or nationally.
• Long term investment and planning is needed to ensure that ownership and accountability for promoting and increasing cohesion both within, and between, communities is clear and effective.
• The NPCC Neighbourhood Policing Portfolio, through the Local Policing Coordination Committee, is engaged in consultation with Government (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and Home Office) on the matters of community cohesion and countering extremism, recognising the inherent challenges and complexities, as well as the risk to community confidence of well-intentioned but misplaced police overreach.
• Clear engagement activity to build trust on policing related matters will, undoubtedly, feed into broader cohesion activity, but policing alone cannot address all the underlying causes of mistrust, tension, misinformation etc. that can impact cohesion. This requires a co-ordinated partnership approach, with clear aims, objectives, resources, governance and accountability.

Dec 2024