Police reform priorities and what they mean for safeguarding

The UK Home Office whitepaper on police reform sets out a clear direction for policing. This is not a future ambition. It is an immediate expectation, with safeguarding at the centre of this shift, including national priorities such as tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).

Police reform is driving a set of connected priorities across policing. Forces are being asked to:

• Improve prevention and early intervention
• Manage demand more effectively
• Strengthen safeguarding for vulnerable individuals
• Deliver consistent and accountable decisions

These priorities are closely linked. Understanding demand and identifying emerging risk is one part of the challenge. Acting on that risk quickly and consistently is another.

Approaches such as predictive policing support earlier identification of demand and escalation risk, while safeguarding processes such as Clare’s Law focus on how that risk is assessed and acted upon.

Together, they reflect a broader shift in policing from reactive response towards earlier intervention and more consistent outcomes.

Safeguarding at the centre of police reform

Police reform will be judged on outcomes and safeguarding is where those outcomes are most visible.

For safeguarding, this means:

• Acting earlier to reduce harm
• Managing increasing demand more effectively
• Delivering consistent decisions across cases
• Demonstrating transparency and accountability

Clare’s Law plays a key role in supporting these objectives. It requires forces to gather information, assess risk, and make decisions that can have a direct impact on individual safety. This is particularly relevant in the context of national priorities such as tackling violence against women and girls, where timely and consistent safeguarding decisions are critical.

For leadership teams, the challenge is delivering this at pace, at scale, and with consistency.

Read our article on why Clare’s Law matters for police reform here.

The operational challenge in delivering police reform

Clare’s Law processes are complex and resource intensive.

Officers and safeguarding teams must gather information from multiple systems, assess risk under time pressure, and produce clear and accountable decisions.

As demand increases, the limitations of current approaches become more visible:

• Information is spread across multiple systems
• Data gathering requires significant manual effort
• Risk assessments can vary between cases
• Administrative burden reduces available capacity

This creates a gap between police reform expectations and operational capability.

Delays in safeguarding decisions are not simply inefficiencies. They directly affect outcomes for individuals at risk.

This is where police reform is delivered or delayed.

Strengthening safeguarding decisions through data and AI

Delivering police reform requires improving how decisions are supported.

Data and AI enable this by improving how information is accessed, assessed, and applied.

In the context of Clare’s Law, this supports:

• Faster access to relevant information across systems
• More consistent identification of risk factors
• Structured workflows that guide decision making
• Clear and auditable outputs

This is not about replacing professional judgement, but ensuring decisions are supported by complete and timely information.

Trusted outcomes with built in governance

For data and AI to support safeguarding effectively, outcomes must be trusted.

This requires governance to be built into how solutions are designed and used.

This includes:

• Clear audit trails showing how decisions are informed
• Transparency in how information is used and presented
• Defined ownership and accountability for decisions
• Role based access to sensitive information

These controls ensure that safeguarding decisions are not only faster, but also consistent, explainable, and aligned to policing standards.

For leadership teams, this is essential to maintaining public confidence as well as improving operational performance.

Measuring impact in police reform

Police reform places increasing emphasis on measurable outcomes.

Improving Clare’s Law processes delivers clear impact.

In many cases, enquiries that would previously take weeks can be reduced to days.

Telefónica Tech’s Clare’s Law accelerator can reduce average information gathering time from three hours to one per request, potentially saving up to 40,000 officer hours nationally each year, based on approximately 20,000 requests.

Improving Clare’s Law processes is not just operational efficiency it is critical to protecting vulnerable individuals.

Learn more about our Clare’s Law accelerator here.

This creates immediate benefits, particularly in areas such as domestic abuse and violence against women and girls where timely safeguarding decisions are critical:

• Faster disclosures for individuals at risk
• Increased capacity within safeguarding teams
• More consistent and defensible decisions

These are the outcomes police reform is designed to achieve.

Aligning to performance and accountability

The PEEL Assessment Framework reinforces the importance of effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy.

Improving Clare’s Law processes supports each of these areas:

• Effectiveness through better protection of vulnerable individuals
• Efficiency through reduced administrative burden and faster processing
• Legitimacy through consistent, transparent, and accountable decision making

The inclusion of built in governance and auditable processes ensures that improved outcomes remain aligned to these expectations.

This alignment is critical as forces face increasing scrutiny on how safeguarding is delivered.

A realistic approach to delivering police reform

A common assumption is that meaningful change requires large scale transformation.

In reality, progress can begin with focused improvements that support key decisions.

For Clare’s Law, this includes:

• Integrating key data sources
• Reducing manual information gathering
• Introducing structured workflows
• Improving visibility of risk

These improvements can be delivered incrementally using existing data within governed environments. This allows forces to begin delivering outcomes now while building capability over time.

Explore how forces are delivering police reform today.

Delivering safeguarding outcomes in police reform

Police reform defines what needs to change.

For safeguarding, the expectation is clear. Decisions must be faster, more consistent, and more effective.

Clare’s Law highlights both the challenge and the opportunity.

Forces that improve how these processes are delivered will be better positioned to protect vulnerable individuals, manage demand, and demonstrate measurable progress.

The focus is no longer on defining change. It is on delivering it.

See how this can be applied

Understanding the impact of these approaches is important. Seeing how they work in a policing context is critical.

You can explore this in more detail in a short demonstration of our Clare’s Law Accelerator, showing how data and AI support faster information gathering, structured decision making, and auditable safeguarding outcomes.

Book a demonstration here to see how this could work within your force and operational context.

You can also explore how we support UK policing more broadly across data, AI, and digital transformation on our policing page.