Home Office · Police use of force statistics, England and Wales
Police use of force reports
812,447reports
Police use of force reports were 812,447 reports in the year ending March 2025, up 8.7% (65,051) from 747,396 in the year ending March 2024.
▲ 8.7% · +65,051 against Year ending March 2024 (year on year)
- Home Office count
- Year ending March 2025
- published 19 August 2026
- Table 1
- row “Tactics and reports=Total number of reports”
- column “2024/25”
- cell value 812447
Year ending March 2021 to Year ending March 2025
Breakdowns
What this measures
The number of use of force reports submitted by officers of the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and British Transport Police in the year ending March; one report is one person against whom force was used in one incident.
What this doesn’t measure
The number of people (a person can be the subject of several reports), the number of tactics (a report can record several), or incidents where force was used but no report was made.
Important caveat
A use of force report records one person against whom a police officer used force in one incident, submitted by the officer; a person can appear in several reports and one report can record several tactics. The Home Office counts these as official statistics, not accredited official statistics, because recording practice is still bedding in and varies between forces. Figures for the year ending March 2025 were reissued in June 2026 with Derbyshire's revised data.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Home Office
- Publication
- Police use of force statistics, England and Wales
- Release
- 2026-08-19, published 19 August 2026
- Source file
- police-use-of-force-apr2024-mar2025-tables-second-edition.ods
- File SHA-256
- ce4a1abbca2dc966fb1736974422895b32e1af75c041823dd7c58aee4e2afdde
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Sheet
- Table_1
- Table
- Table 1
- Row
- Tactics and reports=Total number of reports
- Column
- 2024/25
- Cell value
- 812447
- Geography
- England and Wales
- Unit
- reports
- API
- /api/metrics/use_of_force_reports_total · /series · /vintages
Related metrics
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
- Release
- 2026-08-19 · publication page
- Last updated
- 19 August 2026
- Next release expected
- December 2026 (estimated from the usual cadence)