Rural crime funding of £800,000 confirmed for two national units

Policing minister Sarah Jones set the figure out in a written answer published on Wednesday, 21 October, confirming that the Home Office and Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) support the National Police Chiefs’ Council rural and wildlife crime strategy for 2025 to 2028. A Westminster Hall debate on community policing the same day heard that rural forces remain stretched thin against organised hare coursing and farm theft.

What did MPs tell the debate?

Jess Brown-Fuller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chichester who secured the debate, said farmers in Sussex are organising their own surveillance: “Farmers are creating WhatsApp chats to support each other in monitoring illegal activity on their land, whether that is equipment and tool theft or hare coursing, because of their isolation and the lack of provision in the Sussex police rural crime team.”

Ben Maguire, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall and sponsor of the Rural Crime (Strategy) Bill, told the chamber that planned Home Office funding for the country’s rural crime units works out at about £8,500 per force on average, and pressed the minister to “build on the NPCC rural and wildlife crime strategy, to tackle the scourge of rural crime”.

Alex Brewer, the Liberal Democrat MP for North East Hampshire, set out the stakes: “Hare coursing means chasing and killing hares for entertainment and betting, and that betting is linked to international crime networks. Farmers are left with torn-up land and violent threats, and officers often cannot reach the fields in time.”

Which funding figure is right?

The two numbers heard this week measure different things. Mr Maguire’s figure of £365,000 covers planned funding for forces’ rural crime units. The minister’s written answer puts combined Home Office funding for the National Rural Crime Unit and the National Wildlife Crime Unit at more than £800,000 in 2026 – 27 – the national units that coordinate force-level work on exactly the crimes keepers and farmers report most.

The answer, to a question from Labour’s Callum Anderson, also restates the Government’s backing for the chiefs’ three-year strategy, which names hare coursing, equipment theft and livestock offences among its priorities.

What happens next

Ms Jones told the debate that respect orders created by the Crime and Policing Act 2026 come into force on Monday, 26 October, giving police and courts a new power against persistent antisocial behaviour, including the vehicle-borne kind rural communities report. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s rural crime inquiry, which heard this month that quad and all-terrain vehicle theft rose 31% last year, continues to take evidence.