Home Secretary Theresa May gave a speech to the ACPO Conference today in which she set out the direction of policing under this Government. The full text of the speech can be read here.  However, the main points are as follows:

Big cuts in the Home Office budget are anticipated in the forthcoming Spending Review (the Institute for Fiscal Studies was talking about the 25%-33% range last week) however, the Government will honour the existing pay deal for police officers negotiated with the previous administration, and they will stand by the deal for police staff too.

There will be a review of police terms and conditions (“police officers and staff need to be ready, along with the rest of the public sector, to make sacrifices and accept pay restraint”)

There is no need to do everything 43 different ways. Consideration will be given as to what should be delivered for the service nationally. (“Where central procurement is consistent with our desire to devolve responsibility and accountability downwards, and it saves money for the taxpayer, we will encourage it and facilitate it”)

Police force mergers will not be allowed to happen unless they are voluntary and unless they have the support of local communities.(“there is a lot that police forces can do in terms of sharing back office functions and procurement”)
 
ACPO’s are to produce a national plan for the way the service does business. (“I want that plan to look at what other matters are best reserved and what essential functions – such as criminal justice units, call handling and training – can be delivered more cheaply and effectively with other forces or partners. And I want that plan to identify where collaboration can strengthen the police response to terrorism, organised criminality and threats to the public that cut across force boundaries. We need to understand too the potential benefits of outsourcing, and not just in areas like human resources and finance. Some forces have already shown substantial savings in things like custody management. The ACPO plan will need to look critically at the size of these functions and the number of officers deployed. I am determined that frontline availability should increase even as budgets contract”)

ACPO invited to “think sensibly about a clearer and more transparent leadership role in this landscape.”

The matter of deployment and availability will be examined by HMIC in their value for money inspections later this year.

The review of remuneration and conditions of service will include looking at ways we can give chief constables more discretion over how to use their workforce flexibly and cost-effectively.

Scrapping the ‘stop and account’ form in its entirety and reducing the burden of the stop and search procedures, will be delivered by the end of the year.
There will be a phased rollout of the new arrangements to return charging decisions to the police for a broader range of minor offences from November.
The confidence target and the policing pledge are scrapped with immediate effect (“Targets don’t fight crime; targets hinder the fight against crime.  In scrapping the confidence target and the policing pledge, I couldn’t be any clearer about your mission: it isn’t a thirty-point plan; it is to cut crime.  No more, and no less”)

Chief Constables called upon to take a radical approach to reducing local bureaucracy.

“The police should be accountable to the people they serve in their communities.  This means a directly-elected individual at force level, setting the force budget, agreeing the local strategic plan, playing a role in wider questions of community safety and appointing – and if necessary removing – the local chief constable. It means publishing accurate local crime data, so that maps can be produced showing exactly what crimes have been committed where. It means regular beat meetings for local communities to hold their neighbourhood policing teams to account.”

Detailed proposals and the necessary legislation to be implemented in this session of Parliament, later this Summer.

A Royal Commission on Policing is ruled out.

The vision: a totally redrawn national policing landscape: more collaboration between forces, a review into the role and remit of the NPIA, a border police force as part of a refocused Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and directly-elected individuals to deliver local accountability.
The Home Secretary concluded: “What I have outlined today is a real plan to cut crime and anti-social behaviour.  It’s a plan that gives responsibility to the police, accountability to the public, and the clearest sense of direction possible: your job is nothing more, and nothing less, than to cut crime.”

As with all vision and direction statements, there’s lots of broad brush strokes and general signposting. The really interesting thing will be how this is received by the service. To some it will become a ‘detections are everything’ charter. A return to manipulation of the counting rules to achieve the ‘best’ performance percetion.

The great danger is that advances in partnership working, investment in 21st century customer service systems, employee engagement and development of a customer centric culture get blown away.

The service is famous for lurching from one imperative to the next and, whilst we may understand the political and operational drivers behind the lurch, will the poor old baffled customer understand why yesterday’s priority isn’t today’s ? Will the staff member succumb to the cynicism of change fatigue just when you need them to be on board and committed? Time for your communications people to step up to the plate.

Related posts:

1. ‘There is no clear purpose for ACPO’
2. 12 ways to improve policing – the LGA view
3. Green Paper Consultation: the response
4. The new crime agenda
5. A nod’s as good as a wink…