Chief Constable fortnightly update to the Police and Crime Commissioner - 16 January 2026

Dear Police and Crime Commissioner, Philip Wilkinson,

Yesterday, the Police and Crime Panel discussed the budget proposals and your proposed precept for the coming financial year.

Currently, it is anticipated that Wiltshire Police will need to deliver a minimum of £4.6m savings for 2026/2027, in order to deliver against a reduced budget.

I outlined how we will make these efficiencies in my extraordinary letter last week.

These decisions all form part of our comprehensive, multi-year savings strategy to ensure the organisation continues to operate as efficiently as possible whilst continuing to improve the services our communities rightly deserve.

It is important that we are fully transparent with regards to these significant financial decisions and, to facilitate this, you and I will be hosting a joint Facebook Live event next Wednesday (21st January) between 6.30pm and 7.30pm.

This will be an opportunity for us to answer questions from the public and to set out our proposals for both your office and the force respectively. It will be held on the main Wiltshire Police Facebook page and questions can be pre-submitted here or asked during the event.

As the accountable body for all financial consultation responsibilities with our communities, your office is currently consulting on an increase to the policing element of the council tax.

I would encourage anyone who would like to contribute to your considerations on the precept proposals to do so via the public survey found here.

Notwithstanding these financial challenges, we both remain absolutely committed to continuing to make significant improvements to our service - ensuring Wiltshire Police becomes one of the most effective and efficient forces in the country.

A core component of this will be to continue developing the trust and confidence our communities have in us, the decisions we make and the actions we take.

Last week, there was significant media coverage after the Metropolitan Police Service published a review into their vetting and hiring processes between 2013-2023.

It concluded that 5,100 recruits were subjected to limited checks and 3,338 existing officers and staff who were due for vetting renewal had only limited checks completed.

I wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you and our communities that our vetting process is robust and is continually reviewed.

Additionally, Wiltshire Police does not accept vetting completed by other Forces or agencies if someone is transferring into our organisation – we run our own vetting checks.

We also undertake routine dip sampling of decisions made by vetting analysts to check and test decision making.

The College of Policing and the Home Office are now considering the next steps following the Metropolitan Police Service review and we are awaiting any national recommendations.

Here in Wiltshire, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), published their integrity inspection report into our Force in October which covered vetting decisions, misconduct investigations and how we assess counter-corruption intelligence.

We welcome the transparency and rigour of the HMICFRS inspection process. Now, more than ever, it is right that this area of our business is independently scrutinised.

We accepted all the recommendations made to us by HMICFRS last year regarding the professional standards command within our organisation. 

It is important to note that the inspection itself took place in January 2025 and, at the point of publication, many of the recommendations had been progressed.

Crucially, in terms of oversight and scrutiny, Deputy Chief Constable Mark Cooper is the strategic owner for vetting and Professional Standards within our organisation and is both proactively reviewing and strengthening all our processes.

Our communities can find out more about the national vetting standards by visiting the College of Policing’s Vetting Code of Practice.

Whilst a completely different area of our business, concerns have been raised to both of us recently regarding the safety of Wiltshire’s roads.

Therefore, I would like to close this letter by detailing some of our recent proactive work in improving road safety and denying criminals the use of our roads.

Last week, our Speed Enforcement Officers caught 88 drivers speeding on just one road in Swindon in less than an hour.

The team carried out speed checks at Holy Cross, Queens Drive between 10.35am and 11.25am last Thursday and the fastest vehicle was detected at 58mph – nearly double the 30mph speed limit.

As a result:

Speed enforcement is undertaken by a range of our frontline teams and is conducted across the county on a daily basis. Many of the local results are published on the Your Area section of our website here. 

Our communities can also find out where speed enforcement sessions have been carried out, how often and the outcomes on the road safety section of your website.

This week, we also published the results of our local drink and drug driving operation which ran across December to support the national Op Limit campaign.

Over the month, 120 people were arrested for drink or drug driving related offences in our county. This is a 35% increase on drink or drug driving related arrests, compared to December 2024.

Of those arrested, approximately 40% were arrested on suspicion of drug driving related offences and the rest were arrested on suspicion of drink driving related offences.

Our officers are better equipped than ever to detect drug drivers, which is reflected in the significant number of drug-related arrests we made this month. 

It’s completely irresponsible to get behind the wheel of a vehicle having consumed alcohol or illegal drugs – you are selfishly putting your own life and the lives of other road users in serious danger.

We are sharing more content with our communities on the work of our Roads Policing Unit - from evidence used to convict dangerous drivers to footage taken during pursuits. A range of videos can be found on our YouTube channel.

I would encourage all of our communities to visit the dedicated road safety section of our website for specific advice and guidance.

Kindest regards to you.

Catherine Roper

Chief Constable, Wiltshire Police