As elected police and crime commissioners settle into their new roles over the next few weeks, they will have to find ways to steer their forces through a world of shrinking budgets, fewer staff and changing technology
On November 15, voters will elect the first police and crime commissioners for 41 police forces in England and Wales. On entering office, the commissioners will be looking to hit the ground running with their election promises: reducing crime, making police more accountable to the public and giving victims a stronger voice.
But they will also have to lead their forces through the toughest financial challenges of their histories, with budget cuts of up to 20% required by 2015 and yet more expected in the next Spending Review.
This will require a complete cultural shift for a service used to steadily increasing funding – budgets rose by a third in the decade between 2001 and 2011. With commissioners at the helm, forces will have to transform the way they work by improving services and maintaining public confidence while saving money.
Fortunately, there are plenty of examples of the top brass delivering more for less. Staffordshire Police deputy chief constable Douglas Paxton told delegates at a recent Reform/KPMG conference that his force had rethought its core operational processes and been relentless about making the best use of its staff. The first stage of the programme had looked at how slimmed down middle- and back-office functions could be made to work more effectively. Staff were given tighter objectives and made to concentrate on fewer, better defined, areas of work.
The next step was to assess how the force conducted its main areas of work, including the way it responded to incidents, recorded crimes and dealt with defendants at police stations. Paxton said officers were now attending almost 800 more incidents a month within the target time and charging defendants faster once they were brought into custody, despite having 400 fewer staff.
But there are no set ways of approaching organisational change. In Scotland, the eight police forces are merging into a national police service that will begin operating by April 2013. The new force is expected to allow greater partnership activities and economies of scale, ultimately saving £106m by 2016/17.
However, KPMG research found that only 31% of corporate organisations increased their value from merger programmes. If the Scottish national police force is to achieve its ambitious goals, it will need a clear plan about how integration will take place, adopting lessons from other industries that have succeeded in the past.
Technology will play a central role in the future of the police. High-performing forces are encouraging the public to engage with them through social media and the internet. For example, online tools, such as Facewatch, are allowing businesses to instantly report crime and share information within a local network.
Launched at the end of 2010 by a London wine bar after a spate of thefts from customers, the initiative has reduced the amount of police time spent on recording crime, improved conviction rates and assisted victims by providing instant crime reference numbers. It is Neighbourhood Watch for the twenty-first century, adding new meaning to police founder Robert Peel’s principle that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’.
While forces are pioneering new models of policing, government reforms have set the context. Police and crime commissioners are making forces democratically accountable for the first time and the new police-led ICT company will make technology more responsive to professional needs.
The state of the public finances means that it is not sustainable to keep on spending money on topping up police numbers without any assessment of how well they are operating. Tom Winsor’s Independent Review of Police Officers’ and Staff Remuneration & Conditions will introduce better rewards for high performance and specialist skills.
On the ground, police forces are beginning to respond to the challenge but still have some way to go. In July, the Inspectorate of Constabulary published Policing in austerity: one year on, which found that most forces had reduced their spending while providing consistent services to the public. Yet a more recent report by the inspectorate, Taking time for crime, found that crime prevention was still an afterthought for most forces. There is definitely room for a further push on reform.
Tara Majumdar is a researcher at Reform. This article was first published in the November issue of Public Finance magazine. A copy of the Reform/KPMG conference report, Transforming policing for the twenty-first century, is available on the Reform website www.reform.co.uk
