Roads policing
Roads policing is fundamental to tackling criminality and dangerous driving behaviour. Safer roads mean safer streets and safer communities.
The UK has historically had some of the safest roads in the world and yet there are still more than five deaths and many more serious injuries on our roads every day.
These tragic and often avoidable events have a significant and life-long impact on families, and on the individuals who have to live with their injuries. That is simply not good enough and we must all share the responsibility to influence the way in which our roads are respected and used.
In addition, we know the UK’s road networks are regularly exploited for criminal gain, and the way in which we police our roads must tackle and disrupt this criminality.
As set out in the NPCC Roads Policing Strategy, we must all work together to reduce criminal activity, network disruption and, most importantly, save lives. Effective policing of our roads is an essential means to achieving this. Policing is here to protect everyone on the roads and when road users put others' lives at risk through dangerous driving behaviour, we will robustly enforce the law.
The NPCC Roads Policing portfolio provides national, regional and local leadership and direction through our working groups who offer advice, best practice and, where appropriate, set national standards on a wide range of roads policing activity from police pursuits to vehicle recovery, from national operations to police driver training.
The National Roads Policing Coordination Centre (NRPCC)
The National Roads Policing Coordination Centre is the evolution of the NPCC Roads Policing portfolio, delivering coordination and consistency through the various working groups, sub-portfolios and operational capabilities underneath this new banner.
The centre will enhance the effectiveness of national operational activity, capture and share best practice, deliver innovation, drive professionalism and enhance the ability to respond in a nationally coordinated fashion to emerging threat and risk.
The National Roads Policing Coordination Centre is an evolution of the NPCC Roads Policing Portfolio following the conclusion of the Roads Policing Review in 2025 and subsequent dedicated funding to create a new strategic partnership between NPCC and DfT. It will support road safety and roads policing across the UK with enhanced national coordination, consistency, collaboration and communication across policing, government and the wider road safety community. The enhanced central capability will lead operational cohesion across all UK forces, maximise intelligence opportunities, identify and drive best practice and create a formal mechanism for delivering road safety innovation.
The NRPCC will coordinate activity across policing, providing opportunities for innovation, testing, evaluation and best practice delivery. It will support enhanced ‘business as usual’ roads policing activity, provide a capability to manage responsiveness to emergent risk and opportunity, deliver the Home Office Strategic Policing Review 2023 Cross-Cutting Capability, and key elements of the Roads Policing Review.
It will encompass:
- What is currently known as National Roads Policing Insight and Intelligence (NRPOII) and the operations calendar (e.g. Op Spotlight, Op Apex, Op Limit)
- What is currently known as Op Topaz, the DfT funded cross-cutting capability team
- The NPCC roads policing portfolio
The NRPCC will work with the Government, local police forces and the wider road safety community to help deliver the NPCC National Roads Policing Strategy in line with the Government’s Road Safety Strategy, working to achieve a 65% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured on roads in Great Britain.