Will the demise of Police & Crime Commissioners save money?

The Home Office has announced the abolition of Police & Crime Commissioners, describing the role as “a failed experiment” and claiming massive savings.

In reality it is a thinly veiled move in the direction of centralisation and a loss of operational independence.

Of course the reader may conclude “he would say that wouldn’t he”. As Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley since 2021 it’s not unreasonable to assume I have a vested interest. Keep reading though! I try to offer a dispassionate bit informed view on policing governance, it’s importance and its costs.

The announcement is no doubt popular. One of the few popular decisions this government has taken. I expect no one will shed a tear over a politician losing their job. It has been sold to the public on the groups of cost savings - savings that I fear will never materialise.

Just as the old Police Authorities had a cost of staff, allowances, premises etc, so does the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner. On a like for like basis the PCC model has reduced costs in Thames Valley. 

When PCCs disappear they will be replaced by Policing Boards. These Boards will apparently appoint an individual to carry out their functions on a day to day basis. This will effectively be a PCC in all but name - but without a democratic mandate. The will not directly represent the public or be accountable to them at the ballot box, but instead will be accountable to council leaders across the police area. This post will attract a similar salary to the existing PCC, possibly a higher salary given local authority and police pay scales.

All of the statutory functions will continue. So the staff in finance, managing the Force’s investments and borrowing; internal audit; performance management etc will all continue and will still need people to perform them.

The bulk of “costs” of an PCC are for staff, and commissioned services for victims of crime. The Government has not talked about cutting victims services, nor do I think this would be desirable, so it’s unlikely there will be savings there. Funding for victims services comes from the Ministry of Justice - which I understand was not consulted on the announcement so are now scrabbling around themselves to understand how services will be provided in the future.

The only significant saving claimed is the cost of running elections. The figure quoted by the government is circa £85m nationally. That is largely a notional figure as when my election was held on the same day as, for example, Reading Borough elections, the costs amount to little more than the printing of ballot papers, as the overhead costs of the election (salaries, venues, postage etc) exist already for council elections. PCCs have long argued that aligning more elections would be a sensible saving and increase voter turnout.

I would argue that democracy is important, and although it comes at a cost, that may well be a worthwhile one.

Regardless of the actual savings made from elections. the intention seems to be for the Treasury to retain any cash saved, so no direct benefit to police forces or your council tax bill. 

Government has talked about making £20m savings to be returned to policing. Excellent of course, although there is no detail on how that will be achieved. This savings is described as being achieved “over a parliament” - so 5 years. In very round numbers, with just over 40 police forces this will average at £100k/pa (not all forces are equally funded of course). This would indeed pay for about one and a half police officers. Undoubtedly welcome (and I’m sure many would say better than another politician I admit). It is however somewhat less than the shortfall in funding in the current year alone for the police pay rise (announced by the Home Office but not quite fully funded). With other funding pressures including savings target and inflation, the £100k is almost negligible against the £600m budget of TVP, around 0.016%. It would equate to about 10p per year on the average council tax bill.

It is true that we could do away with policing governance all together, along with grants for victims services and funding for some youth services which are already funded through my office. However there has always been civilian oversight of policing since Peel created the Met. Police officers have significant powers over the rest of us, the power to remove our liberty, and we maintain a system of policing by consent. That has always required oversight and accountability and I would argue that it should remain.

Flawed though the government’s proposed changes are, I do still think that governance matters and therefore I do think Policing Boards will be important. Without some governance there are either no checks and balances or the Home Secretary assumes direct political control from Whitehall. Neither of which are good. 

The new board will remove the direct democracy mandate and replace it with a PCC appointed behind closed doors by council leaders. I fear that we may discover council leaders being much more inclined to encroach on the operational independence of the police than PCCs have ever done.

The government have used old data on public awareness of who their Police & Crime Commissioner is. It is of course true that PCCs are not household names, but how many people can name their local council leader? In 5 years time will a majority of the public be able to name the individual appointed by these council leaders for whom they have not had the opportunity to vote?

I agree turnout at elections was disappointing. However the average turnout for my last local council elections was around 35%. Certainly higher than my own election but hardly a ringing endorsement. Yet no one seems to think that appointing rather than electing councils would be an improvement. Improvements to turnout and costs savings could both be achieved by aligning elections. 

The Government has miss-sold this policy on the basis of savings that I do not believe will materialise or benefit communities. Of course I may be proved wrong in time and frankly I hope I am. 

What is really behind this policy is a desire to centralise. Removing the only individual with a locally elected mandate for policing removes the final barrier to forced mergers of police forces. There are legitimate arguments about the future of the 43 Force model in England and Wales, but the approach the government seems to be taking is to prepare the groundwork before consulting the public, or police forces themselves. Bigger is not always better - just look at the Metropolitan Police and the issues that they face. Thames Valley is already one of the larger forces but the geography and responsibility of police forces does make a real difference to the public on the ground who may actually just care about the crime in their street.

Recent Home Secretaries have shown a tendency to “lean in” on operational policing. Reform have been clear that they would remove “operational independence” from Chief Constable. Regardless of Party politics we should all be concerned about Government having a direct line of control to operational policing. The fringes of social media already bubble away with ideas of Britain being a “police state”. At present I can safely say this is far from the truth, but the loss of local accountability and more centralised control would certainly be taking us in the wrong direction.

A White Paper is due before Christmas. It is likely to show that the problems of legitimate policing oversight have been poorly thought through by the Home Office, and savings will certainly not be realised in a way that benefits the public.