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The number of police forces will be "significantly" reduced as part of radical plans to be announced by Shabana Mahmood. The Home Secretary will on Monday overhaul neighbourhood policing to tackle an "epidemic of everyday offences", such as shoplifting.

And Ms Mahmood will do this by axing a number of forces, with existing ones effectively pushed together to pool resources. Local Policing Areas will be established within larger forces to tackle neighbourhood crimes.

The Home Office will defend this by insisting the "savings made by fewer administrators and managers, as well as shared back-office functions and procurement, will be ploughed into frontline officers, neighbourhood police, 999 response and criminal investigations."

But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Daily Express: "There is no evidence that ripping up local police forces will cut crime or improve performance. Top-down reorganisation risks undermining efforts to fight crime, inevitably leading to centralised control that will hit towns and villages across the country hardest. This is a cover for Labour's failure to deliver on policing and their inability to get officer numbers, response times, or even funding on track.

"Only the Conservatives have a credible plan to cut crime. Through our fully funded £800 million-a-year Policing Plan, we will recruit 10,000 extra officers, give the Home Secretary new powers to ensure police focus on catching real criminals, triple stop and search, use technology, and target the hotspots where crime is concentrated. That is how you protect communities and restore confidence in policing.

"The biggest force, the Met, has the lowest crime solving rates and falling police numbers. Big is not necessarily better."

Reform UK Sarah Pochin MP said: "Shabana Mahmood wants to drastically reduce police forces at a time when crime in this country is out of control. Reducing police forces will inevitably suck resources from rural areas and towns into large cities.

"You can't police communities according to their local needs when everything is merged into giant mega-forces. While standardisation delivers savings, fewer forces do not deliver better policing. Reform UK will restore law and order back into Great Britain."

A Government source said: "That is more money catching criminals and cutting crime in local communities.

"In a white paper titled "From local to national: a new model for policing", Mahmood is expected to outline a radical blueprint for reform, so local forces protect their community. Underpinning the reforms are simple aims to catch criminals, cut crime, and protect the public. As part of these reforms, the Government will radically change the structure of policing.

"First, it will pledge to significantly reduce the number of police forces by the end of the next Parliament. These forces will specialise in tackling serious and organised crime and complex investigations such as homicides, drugs and county lines.

"Under this new structure, all forces - regardless of where they are - will have the tools and resources they need to fight serious crime. Where you live will no longer determine the outcomes you get from your force."

Ms Mahmood is expected to say new, larger forces should focus on tackling serious and organised crime, as well as complex cases like murder and drugs.

Ministers will also announce plans for new Local Policing Areas, with local officers focusing on neighbourhood policing.

It is proposed these will be set up in every borough, town or city across in England, and will be tasked with working with communities and fighting what the government calls "local crime", such as shoplifting, phone theft and drug dealing.

A source added: "People are experiencing crimes that seem to have no consequence. There is an epidemic of everyday offences - like shoplifting, drug dealing, phone theft, and anti-social behaviour - that affect us all but go unpunished.

"Too often, people report these crimes and then wait days for a response. By the time the officers arrive, if they do, the perpetrators and witnesses are long gone. As a result, criminals feel they can cause havoc on our streets with impunity. Shop theft has risen by 72% since 2010. Street theft up 58%."

And ministers will say they have been forced to act because of huge disparities in the number of crimes being solved in different areas and a lack of specialist capabilities. A source said: "Some forces are delivering exceptional performance, but not all are. The outcomes for crime investigations differ markedly depending on where you live. The charge rate for firearm offences ranged from a low of nearly 4% in Durham to a high of 22% in Hertfordshire.

"For home burglaries, just 2.8% in Hertfordshire to 13% in South Wales. And smaller police forces are unable to respond to major incidents or events, without severely diverting resources away from local policing.

"Wiltshire Police were forced to rely on 40 other police forces in response to the Salisbury Poisonings and Essex Police were overwhelmed when they launched 39 simultaneous investigations into the deaths of Vietnamese nationals found in a lorry."