By MICHAEL SKIDMORE

Fraud has become the single biggest form of crime affecting people in the UK and yet our policing institutions have not caught up with the scale of that change. We have a 1960s local policing structure trying to fight a 21st century cyberenabled cross border crime. As a result, the police are achieving limited success and victims are receiving too little by way of service. In 2024 4.1 million people were victims of fraud which alone constituted 43 per cent of all crime affecting those aged over 16 in England and Wales (ONS, 2025). The UK government’s National Fraud Strategy1 estimates that fraud costs UK society £6.8 billion a year (UK Government, 2023). Fraud is not a ‘victimless crime’. According to a recent Police Foundation survey 58 per cent of fraud victims in two police force areas felt worried, 56 per cent experienced stress, 46 per cent felt vulnerable and unsafe and 18 per cent experienced depression. Taking the above statistics into account, the police response to fraud does not match the level of threat to the public. In England and Wales less than a third of frauds are reported to the police. Of those that are reported just 3.5 per cent are deemed suitable for a police investigation (Doig et al., 2024). Most victims reporting fraud to the police receive no service at all. In a 2025 survey2 of police officers and staff carried out for this paper, we found that: • 67 per cent of police workers surveyed said that businesses (e.g., banks, retailers, online platforms) hold the most responsibility for reducing fraud. • 88 per cent of police workers surveyed disagreed with the statement – “Police officers have sufficient resources (time, personnel, budget) to tackle fraud”. • 44 per cent of police workers surveyed don’t think the police are doing a good job when it comes to tackling fraud. • Half (51 per cent) don’t believe police officers have the skills to investigate fraud. • 5 per cent agreed fraud was a victimless crime provided no money was lost. • 67 per cent agreed fraud should be handled by a single national policing body. • 37 per cent aren’t clear which agency should be investigating fraud cases. • 41 per cent of police workers surveyed think fraud is low priority for UK police forces compared to other crimes. The police response to fraud is hampered by: 1. A lack of resources. As of March 2021 there were just 866 economic crime officers in English and Welsh police forces, including regional asset recovery teams. This constitutes a mere 0.64 per cent of the total police workforce to respond to 42 per cent of crime. 2. A predominantly local response to a cross-border crime. While fraud has become a cross border ‘distance crime’, often originating overseas, the operational response to it remains largely local. In practical terms there are limits to what local forces can do to investigate complex fraud. Fraud cases are also rarely prioritised over other local crimes such as sexual and violent crimes. 3. A lack of an ability to identify harm and seriousness. Fraud cases are disseminated on the basis of the viability of a potential investigation rather than because of an assessment of the harm caused to the victim. There is currently no common framework which would allow the police to triage and prioritise fraud cases based on harm 4. A lack of skills. The police workforce currently lacks the skills to properly investigate fraud. In 22 out of 32 police forces surveyed, generalist local investigation teams dealt with all or most fraud investigations, despite 86 per cent of officers believing fraud should be dealt with by specialists. 5. The response remains too focused on arrests and prosecutions. In a world where most fraud originates overseas there needs to be more to the law enforcement approach than trying to achieve traditional criminal justice outcomes. In particular more should be done to proactively disrupt the organised crime networks perpetrating fraud. 6. There is a lot of data on fraud but insufficient insight is being generated from it. From the volumes of crimes reported to a variety of different agencies and the wealth of data that exists in the private sector in relation to fraud there is a vast amount of intelligence that could be used to help inform the police response, support investigations and target proactive operations. Yet while there have been improvements in data sharing this could go much further. The report makes the several recommendations to tackle these problems:

London: Police Foundation, 2025. 28p.