Almost eight in 10 people are satisfied with policing, according to a report published by the police watchdog.
The survey of 26,000 people also found that the majority of the population felt that crime and antisocial behaviour was not much of a problem (62%), while a further one in 10 did not consider it a problem at all (10%).
The study, conducted last summer but published for the first time on Wednesday, was carried out by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to monitor public views of policing. It is the first time the study has been done.
The findings reveal that 76% of people are happy with policing in their area despite 36% not having seen a police officer on patrol over a period of 12 months. Another 23% said they had seen police on foot only once or twice over a year. Those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods, however, are more likely to report having seen a uniformed police presence on foot.
But the survey also found a quarter of respondents believed that crime and antisocial behaviour was a big problem in their local area (25%). Age appears to have an impact on feelings of safety with 33% of 16 to 24-year-olds feeling unsafe, compared with 21% of those aged 65 and over.
The study questioned people aged over 16 across the 43 police forces in England and Wales, between 15 July and 6 August 2015.
Last October, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Sara Thornton, and Craig Mackey, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said the era of routine patrols by “bobbies on the beat” had come to an end.
They also said funding cuts would lead to a transformation in investigating crime, but the Home Office said at the time police reform was working and crime was falling.
Police budgets in England and Wales were protected in real terms in the former chancellor George Osborne’s spending review last November.
People’s overall contentment with policing appears to reflect the national picture of falling crime rates, as recorded by the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CSEW shows overall crime has been falling since a peak in 1995, with some fluctuations from year to year. The latest survey ending March 2016 showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults aged 16 to 59. There were 6.3m incidents, compared with 6.8m in the previous survey year.
Improved crime rates, however, do not reliably result in people feeling safer. The same ONS survey showed that around 6 out of 10 adults (61%) perceived crime in the country as a whole to have risen over the past few years. Fewer people, however, perceived that crime had risen in their local area (32%). Instead, when asked about the level of crime in their local area, compared with the level nationally, only a small proportion (9%) thought crime in their local area was above average and 55% felt it was below average.
News programmes on TV and radio are most often cited as the main source of information influencing people’s perceptions of national crime levels (cited by 67% of people).
The 2013-14 survey found 12% of adults classified as having a high level of worry about violent crime. Almost one in five adults (19%) thought it was either “very” or “fairly likely” that they would be a victim of crime within the next 12 months. All of these measures were at a similar level to the previous year and the general trend has been flat for a number of years.
