By David Williams
07 October 2010
The National Policing Improvement Agency has been
lauded for saving money and buying more efficiently. But the Home Office
plans to bring it to a halt.
For a quango singled out for abolition, there is a striking sense of purpose about the National Policing Improvement Agency. The body was given just two years to live in a consultation paper published by Home Secretary Theresa May in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review. But, far from raging in defiance or simply drifting meekly into oblivion, the focus remains on work to be done.
The body, which has been fully operational only since 2007, combines consultancy work with individual forces and a national role promoting collaboration and implementing big-ticket projects. It was established to bring together work that had been done less successfully by the Home Office and a number of smaller agencies. Right now, even with time running out, it is working with Gwent police to identify efficiencies, and establishing national procurement strategies for body armour, vehicles and forensic services.
Nick Gargan, the NPIA’s acting chief executive, tells Public Finance that the organisation can still play a vital role in ‘taking money out of policing in as intelligent a way as possible’. He says big potential gains can be made in procurement and computer systems and through greater collaboration in areas such as human resources and technical support.
The police force spends about 80% of its total outgoings on people and could be asked to save as much as 25% of its budget – £3bn – in four years. Whatever target it is given this month, the NPIA will be central to making it happen. The body has been widely praised for successfully bringing in the national Airwave digital radio system – for which it still runs the national contract – and its work on the Police National Database. Both are exactly the sorts of high-tech projects that can go wrong all too easily in the public sector. Gargan argues that the NPIA works because it employs people with expertise at all levels of the force, dealing with a full breadth of its functions.
But that argument has not passed muster in the Home Office. Theresa May’s Policing in the twentieth century consultation paper proposed scrapping the agency and incorporating some of its functions into a new National Crime Agency, which would also absorb the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
The NPIA has responded by repeatedly making the case for keeping its functions in a single agency. Gargan underlines the quality and relative cheapness of the service he offers compared with those of private consultants. He also points out that the NPIA was formed following less-than-impressive performance in-house at the Home Office.
The Association of Chief Police Officers has gone further. Its official response to the Home Office paper cast doubt on the wisdom of combining the NPIA’s work with a crime-fighting agency, warning of a potential loss of focus. ‘The bottom line is that the NPIA has benefited the service,’ says Acpo’s finance and resource lead, Graeme Maxwell, ‘It has co-ordinated a lot in terms of our training and made that a lot more efficient… Could it be done differently? Yes, but whether it would be as efficient depends on what replaces it.’
Nevertheless, critics say the NPIA is ripe for cutting. Blair Gibbs, head of the crime and justice unit at market-leaning think-tank Policy Exchange, argues that the agency’s consultancy work should be carried out in the private sector and its national procurement role taken back inside the Home Office.
Gibbs says an excellent way to use police funds more intelligently would be for the government to stop ring-fenced grants, which he calculates amount to around 10% of the total policing budget.
Worse than that, he says, the force is still constituted as ‘43 fiefdoms’, with chief constables spending vast sums locally on equipment such as IT systems and even helicopters with little thought as to how resources could be pooled regionally.
The NPIA sees its role as saving policing from that tendency by promoting collaboration and showing forces how to join up those costs and resources.
The final fate of the agency – to be sealed in this month’s Comprehensive Spending Review – will be instructive to anyone interested in how the government is going to handle the spending cuts. The home secretary will be acutely aware that culling a quango that has achieved real savings could end up costing the Treasury money in lost efficiencies.
07 October 2010
The National Policing Improvement Agency has been
lauded for saving money and buying more efficiently. But the Home Office
plans to bring it to a halt.
For a quango singled out for abolition, there is a striking sense of purpose about the National Policing Improvement Agency. The body was given just two years to live in a consultation paper published by Home Secretary Theresa May in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review. But, far from raging in defiance or simply drifting meekly into oblivion, the focus remains on work to be done.The body, which has been fully operational only since 2007, combines consultancy work with individual forces and a national role promoting collaboration and implementing big-ticket projects. It was established to bring together work that had been done less successfully by the Home Office and a number of smaller agencies. Right now, even with time running out, it is working with Gwent police to identify efficiencies, and establishing national procurement strategies for body armour, vehicles and forensic services.
Nick Gargan, the NPIA’s acting chief executive, tells Public Finance that the organisation can still play a vital role in ‘taking money out of policing in as intelligent a way as possible’. He says big potential gains can be made in procurement and computer systems and through greater collaboration in areas such as human resources and technical support.
The police force spends about 80% of its total outgoings on people and could be asked to save as much as 25% of its budget – £3bn – in four years. Whatever target it is given this month, the NPIA will be central to making it happen. The body has been widely praised for successfully bringing in the national Airwave digital radio system – for which it still runs the national contract – and its work on the Police National Database. Both are exactly the sorts of high-tech projects that can go wrong all too easily in the public sector. Gargan argues that the NPIA works because it employs people with expertise at all levels of the force, dealing with a full breadth of its functions.
But that argument has not passed muster in the Home Office. Theresa May’s Policing in the twentieth century consultation paper proposed scrapping the agency and incorporating some of its functions into a new National Crime Agency, which would also absorb the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
The NPIA has responded by repeatedly making the case for keeping its functions in a single agency. Gargan underlines the quality and relative cheapness of the service he offers compared with those of private consultants. He also points out that the NPIA was formed following less-than-impressive performance in-house at the Home Office.
The Association of Chief Police Officers has gone further. Its official response to the Home Office paper cast doubt on the wisdom of combining the NPIA’s work with a crime-fighting agency, warning of a potential loss of focus. ‘The bottom line is that the NPIA has benefited the service,’ says Acpo’s finance and resource lead, Graeme Maxwell, ‘It has co-ordinated a lot in terms of our training and made that a lot more efficient… Could it be done differently? Yes, but whether it would be as efficient depends on what replaces it.’
Nevertheless, critics say the NPIA is ripe for cutting. Blair Gibbs, head of the crime and justice unit at market-leaning think-tank Policy Exchange, argues that the agency’s consultancy work should be carried out in the private sector and its national procurement role taken back inside the Home Office.
Gibbs says an excellent way to use police funds more intelligently would be for the government to stop ring-fenced grants, which he calculates amount to around 10% of the total policing budget.
Worse than that, he says, the force is still constituted as ‘43 fiefdoms’, with chief constables spending vast sums locally on equipment such as IT systems and even helicopters with little thought as to how resources could be pooled regionally.
The NPIA sees its role as saving policing from that tendency by promoting collaboration and showing forces how to join up those costs and resources.
The final fate of the agency – to be sealed in this month’s Comprehensive Spending Review – will be instructive to anyone interested in how the government is going to handle the spending cuts. The home secretary will be acutely aware that culling a quango that has achieved real savings could end up costing the Treasury money in lost efficiencies.
