Hot spot funding helps Force step up patrols to tackle violent crime

8 April 2025

More than 11,000 extra patrols were carried out in 57 West Midlands Police hot spots during the year ending March 2023 through £3 million in funding from the Home Office.

The Force was one of 20 with the highest level of serious violence given extra money for enhanced hot spot policing through the Grip programme.

An initial single-year grant ended on 31 March 2022 and a multi-year agreement was put in place for the next three years.

Grip aims to deter serious violence through visible patrols while also adopting problem-oriented policing (POP) to address the root causes of violence in those areas.

Extra patrols were carried out in West Midlands hot spots.

The Home Office has now published its evaluation of the second year (year ending 31 March 2023) of the programme which showed it funded at least 90,000 patrols across the forces involved with more than 85,000 weapons collected, 5,000 more than the previous year.

However, the results did not suggest the programme had a ‘statistically significant impact’ on the volumes of violence and robbery offences in the hot spots in the year ending March 2023, despite there being a seven per cent reduction reported the previous year (year ending 31 March 2022).

The evaluation report says this may be because hot spot policing was not implemented as well in the year ending March 2023 or because the effects of such initiatives wane over time. It also speculates that forces may have put more effort into POP.

Positive outcomes

But the report says there was an impact on crime outcomes. So called ‘positive outcomes’ for violence/robbery (a measure of the number of crimes solved) increased by 8.1 per cent in hot spots on days patrolled versus days not patrolled.

“Similar impacts were observed in other crime baskets, including all crimes minus possession, victim-based crimes and possession, with significant increases of 7.8 per cent, 8.2 per cent and 20 per cent on patrol days, respectively. This suggests the programme is resulting in more robbery and violence offences being solved and more weapons and drugs being found in the hot spots,” the report states.

West Midlands Police Federation secretary Tim Rogers said it was disappointing that the funding had not led to a significant decrease in violence and robbery offences in the Force’s hot spots, the impact on crime outcomes was welcome.

“If this cash injection means that that more offenders involved in robberies and violent offences are being brought to justice and more weapons and drugs are being taken off our streets, then this has to be a good thing not just for the police service but also for the communities we serve,” says Tim.

Funding extended

“With the funding having been extended to include all forces in the final year of the programme, which has just ended, it will be interesting to read the final evaluation on the impact of this initiative when it is published, though we appreciate this may be a way off.

‘This report is further evidence, however, that the current police funding model is not fit for purpose. The police service is being forced to use a sticking plaster to tackle violent crime and has to be reactive rather than being able to adopt a proactive, preventative approach.”

Twenty forces were involved in the Grip programme during the year ending 31 March 2023, with funding totalling £26,069,999, covering 92,126 extra patrols.

West Midlands Police received £3,023,855, which funded 11,313 extra patrols in 57 hotspots covering 12.48 square kilometres.

Patrols

According to the report, the Force used a patrol schedule randomised by day with hot spots targeted to receive 15 to 45-minute patrols on 50 per cent of days on average. However, compliance was around 60 to 70 per cent most quarters, meaning that areas received a patrol about one day in three.

For most of the year ending March 2023, it used officer forms to capture attendance and time in the hot spots, checked using Airwaves data. However, in the final months of the year ending March 2023, the Force began testing its own GPS app to be used to track all patrols in the year ending March 2024.