Tim Hollis: Police have challenges to solve in new era of budget cuts and commissioners

Whether involved in health, education, policing – or indeed Whitehall – the public are better informed, more questioning and expectations are constantly rising.

With greater transparency, success and failure in delivery of service is more apparent and widely commented upon both by the traditional media and, increasingly, via social media.

And always the wisdom of hindsight is readily to hand and rapidly deployed when things go wrong – and as they do – from time to time. During my 35 years of policing, I witnessed enormous changes taking place across a service which has always been regarded as being fairly traditional, and the repeated claims that the service was “the last unreformed part of the public sector” became somewhat tiresome latterly.

During that period, however, the scale and nature of the changes being confronted by the police were never so widespread, so complex nor so high risk as those currently being experienced.

For chief officers, equalling the very real challenges of making 20 per cent budget cuts is the requirement to adapt their leadership to the significant changes consequent upon the introduction of locally-elected police and crime commissioners in the 41 police forces outside London.

When the legislation was being debated, the leadership of the Police Service made clear its reservations at the proposals but, to quote the former Police Minister Nick Herbert, we set about seeking to make the new arrangements work once “Parliament had spoken...” and the elections had taken place last November.

During my final few months as chief constable and working to the Humberside commissioner Matthew Grove, I reminded my force that the commissioner and the force had two important things in common – we were there to serve the public and the public expected us to provide the best service possible within the budgets made available to us.

While chief constables will be held to account for their success in cutting budgets while delivering a good quality of service locally, I believe that crime commissioners face two critical tests which will, in turn, determine whether this radical aspect of police reform survives in the long term – continuing reductions in crime and gaining the confidence of the public.

Regarding crime reductions, to continue to build upon the solid foundations they have inherited, will not be easy. While public perceptions about crime remain a matter of concern, we have witnessed 10 successive years of crime reduction across the UK. International comparisons have suggested that Britain is one of the most peaceful countries in the world with significant reductions in homicide and violence.

The police do not claim credit for this success as we know that much of this is down to significantly improved partnership working, wider social changes – and an element of good fortune.

The challenge is to maintain these reductions when there are widespread cuts to public sector budgets being implemented simultaneously across so many of the local agencies that are involved in successful partnership working.

The challenge to commissioners is compounded by the deliberately raised expectations that they have funds to commission local services. The reality is many of the budgets devolved to them by the Home Office were “top sliced” prior to them being devolved to local areas.

The second, and more complex, challenge relates to public confidence in the new elected post itself. The low turnout last November meant that the new commissioners started off on the back foot. Not only were they taking on an entirely new role, but from the start they were under pressure to justify their position and mandate.

In spite of the suggestion that there is a crisis in British policing, public confidence in the police remains high at a local level. In Humberside, it was running at about 86 per cent and, as Chief Constable, I felt genuine concern that the continued criticism of the November elections would, over time, start to undermine confidence in the Police Service itself. These are early days, but stories about commissioners continue to appear which focus on staff appointments and judgments rather than on their success in delivering actual improvements to the service. If public confidence in the new role is to improve, then that focus must change.

The real test will fall at the end of 2013 when comparisons 
on crime levels against previous years will allow judgement to 
be made as to whether they 
have started to deliver on 
their manifesto commitments 
or not.

And there remains, of course, a wider political consideration. The Labour Party did not support the idea of police commissioners but, once the legislation was passed by the coalition Government, they decided to support candidates running for office. Today, the majority of metropolitan/big city police forces are under the stewardship of Labour commissioners, the smaller, more rural ones under Conservative or Independent commissioners. This fact is, in itself, starting to change the dynamic of the relationships between police forces.

With a general election due in 2015, a year before the next commissioner elections are scheduled, the major parties will have to decide whether or not to continue with the new governance arrangements.

Much will depend on how the policing landscape looks in two years time: is crime still going down or are the combination of budget cuts and social factors reversing that 10-year trend?

Has the practical experience of crime commissioners actually delivered the greater accountability and public confidence that it was heralded as delivering?

Although I have left the Police Service, the last 177 years have made the British Police Service 
one of the most widely respected in the world and I am confident that this will continue.

Society is changing and it is right that governance arrangements for the public sector change accordingly. In a democracy, it is ultimately for the public to determine whether those changes are judged a success.

With regards to policing, much will hinge on what is actually delivered under the new arrangements – has crime continued to go down and has public confidence gone up?