THAMES Valley Police has been dubbed as ‘requiring improvement’ at tackling serious and organised crime, a recent report reads.

The Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire police force needs to improve staffing and frontline resources, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found.

In the report, the inspectorate examines how serious organised crime (SOC) is tackled across the country.

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It states that Thames Valley police ‘requires improvement at tackling serious and organised crime’.

The first point states the force ‘needs to make sure it has enough analysts and financial investigators to tackle serious and organised crime’.

It states that due to the ‘reduced number of analysts’, the ‘increased workload’ means requests take longer to complete.

The report also reads that the force ‘should make sure that it has enough frontline resource to tackle serious and organised crime’.

 “One of the force’s SOC proactive teams told us that officers are frequently moved to work on response duties,” it reads.

“These teams are the only local resource to proactively tackle SOC threats. Officers were managing high caseloads and working on some high-risk operations.

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“Some officers in the proactive teams told us that there was an over-reliance on overtime working to meet SOC demand.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Craig Kirby, Head of Crime and Intelligence, said the force has acknowledged the report and is ‘actively progressing the learning points’.

He said: “In order to address these areas for improvement, a new governance structure has been implemented which is working with colleagues across the South East Regional Organised Crime unit, as well as our local policing, Public Protection and Safeguarding, and Crime and Intelligence commands.

“We have already made significant improvements in a number of areas, with us reducing the abstraction rate of our Neighbourhood officers from their local teams.

“We are aware of the resourcing challenges we face and have established mechanisms to ensure our resources are appropriately deployed, based on threat risk and harm and the wider operational demands.”

He noted that the report highlighted positive comments about the force, including praise about specialist fraud, surveillance and dedicated serious organised crime teams.

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“HMICFRS highlighted our commitment to prevent serious and organised crime and our work to divert young people from becoming involved in this,” he said.

“They also highlighted our positive work with the Crown Prosecution Service to increase the volume of charges and remands for those found in possession of knives.

“We continue to disrupt those who engage in serious organised crime and our hotspot policing app has also helped to reduce serious violence across the Thames Valley.”