More about this area

The force says...

Almost 5 percent of the UK population lives in Greater Manchester. The force (GMP) provides policing for a diverse population of 2.8m residents of which over 16 percent are ethnic minorities. The region has a growing economy, but also districts that are the most deprived in the country. It includes ten local authorities, each with a unique identity and policing challenges.

There are also 100,000 students and 5 million people live within one hour’s travel. There is a thriving night time economy and over 1,200 public events each year that draw on policing resources.

GMP deals with more priority incidents relative to population than any other force and has recorded almost 340,000 crimes over the last year. This 32 percent increase follows HMICFRS recommendations to improve crime recording. This is a significant increase in demand for policing services and GMP’s police officers deal with more crimes per officer than the average of comparable metropolitan forces. There is growing complexity in investigations and safeguarding with more on-line crime and harassment as well as 32,000 missing person incidents, 22,000 mental health incidents, and 64,000 domestic abuse incidents and GMP is monitoring 3,500 sex offenders. HMICFRS has recognised GMP’s outstanding work in tackling organised crime, modern slavery and human trafficking. The importance of maintaining strong specialist policing resources together with local policing, investigation and victim support was underscored by the terrorist attack in May 2017 in which 22 people were murdered.

GMP has lost 25 percent of its workforce in the last seven years due to budget reductions. Between 2011/12 and 2016/17 GMP made savings of £186m and has to find further anticipated budgetary savings of £57.2m by 31/03/2022.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, was elected in 2017 and set a new plan for policing and crime, Standing Together, in March 2018.

Disclaimer: the above statement has been prepared by Greater Manchester Police. The views and information in it are not necessarily those of HMICFRS.