Independent corruption investigations opened by the police watchdog have plummeted by 70 percent in five years, new data reveals.
The figures raise serious questions about the oversight of the police at a time when they are under huge scrutiny, and have prompted campaigners to slam a “broken” complaints system.
The number of investigations that aren’t fully independent because they involve police support has remained steady. Yet even accounting for these, the total number of corruption probes has still fallen by a third.
The investigations in question are those done by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), an agency set up to improve accountability across England and Wales’ 43 police forces. It only takes on the most serious complaints against police, including corruption and misconduct.
Data we obtained through freedom of information requests reveals the number of fully independent investigations it has opened involving police corruption has fallen in every one of the past five years, from 101 in 2020/21 to just 30 in 2024/25.
The figures are complicated slightly by the fact that the IOPC runs two different kinds of investigations: directed and independent.
Directed investigations are run by the IOPC but use local police force officers and resources. A spokesperson said these are used when a given investigation requires skills or assets the IOPC does not have, such as complex undercover work or counter-surveillance. These have remained fairly stable at just over 100 each year.
The second kind are independent investigations, which are carried out solely by the IOPC. And it’s these that have taken a nosedive.
“To be [independently investigating] just 30 corruption cases in 2024/25 is a surprisingly low number, given the publicity around police corruption,” Robert Barrington, a professor of anti-corruption practice at the University of Sussex, said. “There are over 235,000 police staff in England and Wales, and research suggests that police around the world are considered one of the highest risk areas for corruption.”
A spokesperson for the IOPC said: “Over the last five years the total amount of investigations we have been resourced to undertake has reduced in line with our budget—which has seen a reduction of more than a third in real terms in recent years while the complexity of investigations has increased.”
Stretched resources
The data adds to concerns raised in a major review of the IOPC published in 2024, which laid out the watchdog’s stark challenges. It found that, since the IOPC was set up in 2018, the number of complaints referred to the watchdog had surged by 113 percent while the number of independent investigations launched had fallen by 61 percent.
And while the IOPC investigated one in every six referrals it received in its first year of existence, 2018/19, this year it is expected to investigate only one in 32.
The IOPC spokesperson said the watchdog is in the process of addressing these challenges with “the most radical transformation programme in our history” but noted that “further improvements are dependent on the funding we receive”.
They added: “We would like to do even more but must make some difficult decisions as we focus our stretched resources on those cases most likely to impact public confidence.”
Kevin Blowe, campaigns and media coordinator at the police monitoring charity Netpol, said: “The collapse in the rate of investigations is tied, undoubtedly, to funding cuts over a decade of austerity.
“However, the decisions it does take are so poor or so timid in the face of criticism from the media and the Police Federation that, even with more money, it is hard to believe a better-resourced body would offer better outcomes.”
The agency’s struggles have come alongside a huge upsurge of public scrutiny and outrage at police conduct. The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer in March 2021 was followed later that year by the arrest of David Carrick, a serial rapist who admitted 71 offenses of sexual violence committed over a 17-year period.
A number of high-profile reviews and inquiries have found systemic failings, including the 2023 Casey Review that described “institutional racism, sexism and homophobia” in the Met.
Robust handling of complaints is seen as crucial in maintaining public confidence in policing, which the latest figures are unlikely to help.
“The police complaints system is broken,” Blowe said. “It is neither genuinely independent nor powerful enough, by design, to provide genuine accountability. That’s why police corruption isn’t going away any time soon.”
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