Perspectives
Sophie Davis, Director of Research
Friday 22 November 2024
Earlier this week, the Home Secretary announced a series of reforms to policing as part of what she called “an ambitious programme of change to create a police service fit for the future”. Our Director of Research Sophie Davis, who runs our in-house think tank Crest Insights, takes a look at what was announced.
Speaking to an annual policing conference on Tuesday, the Home Secretary described a police service “buckl[ing] under the strain” and unable to “do the job they signed up for [...] and deliver for the public as they should”. In response, the measures she announced are the first in what is intended to be a major reform programme, with future detail to be set out in a White Paper in the Spring.
Why is reform needed?
The Home Secretary is broadly right in her assessment of the problems. Policing is facing a crisis: trust and confidence have been eroded, fewer than 6% of recorded crimes result in a charge, officer morale is low and forces are struggling to respond to the changing nature of crime. The current policing model - designed for an age when most recorded crime was geographically bounded and took place offline - is ill suited to 21st century crime and leads to inefficiencies. Legacy infrastructure, poor data and a lack of interoperable systems hamper our ability to understand what works, and drive innovation. And while there are accountability mechanisms in place, we lack an effective way of intervening with failing forces.
What are the measures announced?
A “neighbourhood policing guarantee”, including the recruitment of 13,000 new officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). This is not a new commitment. Labour have been clear that neighbourhood policing would be at the centre of their reform programme. The pledge includes a commitment to 13,000 more officers in neighbourhoods, including hiring 3,000 new officers and 4,000 PCSOs. Neighbourhood policing matters to the public - a poll found that 85% of people feel it is important to have a safer neighbourhood team with a named officer and contact details. It is also true that in many areas of the country neighbourhood policing has been somewhat depleted. A more visible police presence may go some way to addressing public trust and confidence - provided they are deployed in the right way and their skills are used effectively. However, the last decade has also seen an important de-civilianisation, arguably resulting in a less productive workforce. Improving outcomes will rely on a move away from purely officer numbers and towards a greater focus on productivity.
The creation of a National Centre for Policing. Alongside more local policing, the speech also signals a move towards a stronger centre. The National Centre for Policing will pool together key capabilities and drive efficiencies, taking on responsibility for existing shared services, national IT capabilities, and host national capabilities such as the National Police Air Service and Forensics. Policing increasingly requires specialist capabilities, many of which require considerable investment and would be better developed at scale, rather than replicated up to 43 times. And while there are pockets of innovation when it comes to the use of new technologies, their application at the national level lacks strategic input, coordination and oversight. Pooling digital, tech & procurement functions is therefore sensible. But reform on this scale is challenging, particularly where it requires individual forces to give up capabilities; and previous attempts at a similar approach have faced difficulties. Ahead of seeing more detail, there are also questions about the intended scope and scale of the centre:
Where will it sit? What will its relationship to the Home Office and individual forces be; and how will it interact with existing bodies, such as the College of Policing?
How far could its remit extend? The Home Secretary hinted that she was interested in exploring the opportunities to expand its remit “around those operational responsibilities where effective coordination is critical for success”, something Crest & the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have previously suggested in the context of fraud and serious organised crime.
Lastly, there is the question of whether this move will be able to realise the savings expected, and how quickly, especially as the Home Office is relying on these to fund frontline policing.
The creation of a dedicated Home Office unit to monitor performance and improve public safety. This is modelled on the standards unit introduced by Lord Blunkett when he was Home Secretary and will, among other things, deliver a national performance framework for policing, something HMICFRS has previously called for. There is a clear need to better understand police performance and drive consistency among forces but this is easier said than done. Success here will depend on a number of factors, including:
A better understanding of what good looks like in the context of policing;
Having the right data in the first place, which relies on ensuring that forces track the right outcomes (related to the first point) and that recording practices are accurate;
Being able to compare data across forces: this depends not only on systems being interoperable (which is largely not the case at the moment) but also on being able to properly account for differences between forces (demographics, demand etc).
More broadly, there is the question of whether policing has the capacity to deliver on more ambitious targets (which comes back to productivity).
This brings us to the last pledge…an additional £500million for policing, to be split as £260 million for the core grant and additional funding for neighbourhood policing, counter-terrorism and the National Crime Agency. The Home Secretary also confirmed that there would be additional funding to compensate forces for the impact of the rise in National Insurance Contributions. The breakdown of the funding will be published as part of the police settlement in December - this will include the precept and government grants. Until then it remains to be seen whether policing is (once again) being asked to do more with less.
Is this the start of a new relationship between the Home Office & the Police?
Beyond the specific measures announced, the reform programme was framed as “a strategic reset in the relationship between government and policing”, with the Home Office taking a more active role, setting the strategic direction and driving performance and standards. This marks a departure from the last decade, which arguably saw the Home Office take more of a backseat role, handing over more of the responsibility to individual PCCs and Chief Constables. This speech is a confirmation of what we have begun to see over the last few months - that Yvette Cooper intends to be a more interventionist Home Secretary. For now she appears to have the support of police chiefs but she has set herself an ambitious task which will require significant additional investment down the road - where the multi-year spending review due in April is already looming large.
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