By Vivienne Russell
1 March 2011
As the thin blue line is set to get thinner, Lancashire police are feeling the force of spending reductions. Resources director David Brindle tells PF how he is managing to find the savings and keep the constabulary upbeat
David Brindle tells a funny story about the differences between police officers and accountants. Shortly after he took up his role as director of resources at Lancashire Constabulary back in 1995, the senior detective who headed CID visited him in his office. ‘He was a really tough bobby,’ says Brindle. ‘A Gene Hunt type. A bobby’s bobby.’
The detective was shamefaced because, after neglecting to agree a fee with an expert medical witness in a murder inquiry, he’d received an invoice for an amount far in excess of what the force normally paid for such services. ‘I said, “You soft bugger, tell him to sod off”.’
This level of naivety about financial management from ‘somebody who’s seen and done everything and dealt with all sorts of horrible incidents and with some real tough detectives’ was surprising, Brindle says. ‘When I came here, policing was a bit of a backwater in my part of the business. I think we are far more professionalised now.’
Getting to grips with costs is something all the senior officers at the force have had to do as they face up to the cuts. Lancashire Constabulary, the ninth largest in the country, has an annual budget of £300m (although this will drop) and employs 3,600 officers and 2,000 civilian staff.
It is also one of the top performing. Inspector of Constabulary reviews have placed Lancashire in the top two or three over the past few years. Crime levels have fallen by 24.5% since 2005/06, with vehicle crime and robbery dropping by 38.9% and 32.4% respectively.
As director of resources, Brindle is the only civilian member of the force’s top management team, advising the chief constable on all matters financial. He oversees not only the finance department, but also IT, estates, information management and a range of other administrative support functions, which together employ around 300 people.
The past 18 months, however, have brought unique challenges. Lancashire has to take £45m out of its budget over the next four years.
Is this the toughest he’s known it? ‘Without a shadow of a doubt,’ comes the frank reply.
‘If I go back over 15 years, the most we’ve had to reduce a budget by is £4m or £5m. For next year we’ve had to find £14m, and we have to find the same amount the next year. It’s three times as much, and you have it two years running and then two years after that. It is significantly more than we’ve ever done.’
But Brindle is not downhearted. The budget is ready for sign-off, the first £14m of savings have been found, and the force is ready for the challenges ahead.
The importance of optimism is something he stresses time and time again. ‘We’re trying to avoid a woe-is-me approach. Part of what we’re doing is about leaders demonstrating optimism. It will be difficult, but it’s doable.’
The challenge is not taking the money out of the organisation, Brindle explains, but maintaining the level of service.
The government is ‘a tad optimistic’ to expect services to improve while resources are slashed, he ventures, but the force is focusing hard on ensuring performance levels are kept up, crime levels kept down and public confidence left undamaged.
Every part of the force’s operation is being examined, with 49 areas of work under review – from the overtime bill to estate costs to the sensitive area of frontline policing. ‘In the police, the front line is a big area, a big cost. You can’t take £45m out of this organisation without looking at the front line and it would be wrong not to do so.’
Frontline resources will have to be cut and one thing is inevitable: police officer numbers will have to come down.
‘They can’t not do,’ he says. ‘Police officer salaries are our biggest single spend on any item.’
Brindle won’t be drawn on the overall number Lancashire is likely to lose over the next four years for fear of whipping up panic in the local media. But he reveals that, with an average of 15 officers retiring each month and a recruitment freeze in place since September 2009, 200 have already gone.
To mitigate the effect, the force is focusing on better use of technology – officers now have handheld data devices, which speed up the paperwork – and better deployment of officers. The boundaries between the county’s six policing divisions are being blurred so officers can be deployed more flexibly and effectively.
A particular test will be communications. It will be tough to explain to and reassure a public conditioned to believe that high police officer numbers equate to a good service, Brindle says.
‘Our challenge is to keep public confidence up. Police officer numbers coming down doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get a reduced service or the chances of us responding to a call quickly have gone down.’
In the back office there is also a ruthless focus on efficiency. Outsourcing? Possibly, but only once the force has had a go itself. All back-office departments have to find 30% savings.
Brindle says he would only consider inviting in consultants when support services were as ‘lean and mean’ as they could be. He’s not prejudiced against the concept of outsourcing, saying he’s keeping an open mind.
But with a background in consultancy himself – he worked at both PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG – he ‘knows how they operate’.
He adds: ‘We want to make it hard for them. If somebody comes and says they can save us 10%, then we’ll take it.’
Despite the cutting climate, morale at the force is holding up quite well, he says. ‘One of the benefits, if that’s the right word, of the current situation, is that everybody understands it. We don’t have to convince staff. Everybody understands that it’s not our fault and we have to take the money out.’
And it’s not all doom and gloom. The force is pressing ahead with the construction of a new building at its Preston headquarters, which will house more centralised policing and other support functions.
Brindle’s own morale is also high – his hard work of the past 15 years was recognised at the beginning of this year when he was honoured for services to the police. Every inch the straight-talking northerner, he declares himself ‘dead chuffed’ with his MBE, observing that it allows him to take his place alongside some of the more venerable members of the Coronation Street cast.
He is also confident that when he retires in March, he will leave Lancashire Constabulary in a position of strength. ‘The challenge for us is optimism,’ he says again. ‘This is difficult, but we’ll be fitter at the end of it.’
