The Home Office is a key partner of the UK’s Security and Resilience sector, which ADS proudly represents, and both work together to support the UK’s security and prosperity. However, as a Ministerial department with a wide range of responsibilities it can be tricky to get a complete picture of the work that it does. Fortunately, last month the Home Office released its annual report, which provided a useful overview of its activities in the last financial year. ADS provides a snapshot of the most interesting statistics below, structured according to the Home Office’s seven core goals:

Cut crime and the harm it causes

  • The Government is providing £3.6m to create a National County Lines Co-Ordination Centre to tackle crime associated with the ‘county lines’ assessment;
  • The UK came top for its standards against money laundering and terrorist finance in a review of 60 countries by the Financial Action Task Force in December 2018;
  • £4m is being invested in a new three-year programme to tackle illicit use of the Dark Web.

Manage civil emergencies

  • In the context of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the number of Fire Safety audits on purpose-built floats of four or more storeys more than doubled from 2016-17 to 2017-18 up to 6,600;
  • However, the proportion of ‘satisfactory’ results to these audits fell from 78% to 69% during same period.

Protect vulnerable people and communities

  • There was a six-fold increase since December 2016 in the number of police-led modern slavery operations;
  • Over 230 civil society groups have been funded and supported to counter extremism in their communities, over 50 of which focus on right-wing extremists.

Reduce terrorism

  • The counter-terrorism policing budget increased by 7% in 2018-19, up to £757m;
  • Around 1,800 organisations (including ADS) have signed up to the Action Counters Terrorism (ACT) campaign, an information and awareness raising campaign;
  • A counter-terrorism information exchange was launched by Counter Terrorism Policing and Pool Re at Security and Policing, the Home Office’s official event (which ADS proudly supports).

Control legal migration

  • In 2018-19 Immigration Enforcement made 593 disruptions (of which 71 were major) against individuals and organised crime groups (OCGs) involved in modern slavery and organised immigration crime – disruptions increased by over 40% on the last year;
  • Two Border Force cutters were re-deployed in the Channel and new aerial surveillance was also deployed.

Contribute to prosperity

  • Border Force facilitated 53.3m passenger transactions in 2018, up from 46.2m in 2017, through the ePassport Gates;
  • 56% of all HM Passport Office applications were made online in 2018-19 compared to 35% in 2017-18.

Responding to Brexit

  • Over 900 more Border Force officers have been recruited as compared to March 2018 in preparation for Brexit;
  • Over 210,000 EU Settlement Scheme applications were processed between August 2018 and March 2019.

To find out more about how the UK’s Security and Resilience sector supports all of the work above, and more, please visit this web page.