National Responsibilities
The Home Secretary’s national ‘Strategic Policing Requirement’ (SPR) sets out the collective capabilities that police forces across England and Wales are expected to have in place in order to protect the public from cross-boundary threats. The SPR ensures that a national capacity and capability is maintained against a localised agenda.
The SPR enables the Sussex PCC to hold the Chief Constable to account for policing – both local and national.
The Home Secretary requires the police service to ensure it has sufficient capacity and capability to prevent and respond to a number of national threats and can operate in a way that is consistent with other police forces:
The PCC must ensure that sufficient funds are set aside to cover Sussex’s contribution to a national response under the SPR.
The PCC and the Chief Constable must have due regard to the SPR and ensure that their police force is in a state of readiness to deal with these national threats. They must be able to explain how their force would respond to one of these threats if it was needed to and this explained in more detail within Sussex Police’s Operational Delivery Plan.
Whilst the primary focus is to keep the people of Sussex safe, Sussex Police has a vital national role which can see officers working across the country and beyond to help tackle the following threats:
- public disorder
- civil emergencies
- organised crime
- terrorism
- large-scale cyber incidents
- child sexual abuse
View a copy of the national Strategic Policing Requirement.
Read a short case study about the provision of mutual aid, under the SPR, for the 2013 G8 Summit.