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Operational Planning

Operations — Authorised Professional Practice

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Summary

Operational planning involves developing force strategies, operational plans, and tactical options based on available legal powers and policies. It emphasizes the need for officers to select the appropriate strategies that handle threats proportionately while ensuring accountability through clear decision-making rationales. Furthermore, operational incidents may require a multi-agency response, guided by the Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP). This ensures comprehensive cooperation among different agencies when addressing incidents.

Key principles

  • 1Consider legal powers and policies while planning.
  • 2Develop strategies that address threats proportionately.
  • 3Ensure accountability in decision-making processes.
  • 4Acknowledge potential multi-agency involvement.
  • 5Utilize Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP) when necessary.

Defined terms

Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP)
Guidelines to facilitate cooperative and effective responses from emergency services in incidents that necessitate multi-agency collaboration.

Full guidance

This page is from APP, the official source of professional practice for policing.

The powers and policies available to help resolve an incident or operation should be considered at all times when developing force strategies, operational plans and tactical options. These may include the specific legal powers that police officers have, or policies agreed at a local, regional or national level. Selecting the appropriate powers and policies enables a strategy to be developed that addresses the threat in a proportionate manner and ensures accountability by demonstrating the decision-making rationale behind the strategy.

The incident may be part of a wider multi-agency response and have far reaching consequences, in which case partners will follow the Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Principles (JESIP)(opens an external website in the same tab) .

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Reproduced from the College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice under the Open Government Licence v3.0, as captured on 2026-06-27. APP is amended over time — check the source link below for the current version. This is a reference, not operational authorisation.

APP is the authoritative source for UK policing practice and is updated over time. For the current, official version — including any operational detail not reproduced here — go direct.

Read the full APP guidance

Source: College of Policing — Authorised Professional Practice · Crown copyright, licensed under Open Government Licence v3.0. Summary fetched 2026-06-27.