Yorkshire-wide police force 'totally misguided', boss says
Abolishing Yorkshire’s police forces to set up a ‘mega force’ is ‘totally misguided’ and risks undermining public trust in accountability, a North Yorkshire policing chief has said.
Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime Jo Coles set out her opposition to the proposals in an article for the Yorkshire Post (page 12), saying she is yet to see the evidence that the move would make people safer.
She said while policing ‘absolutely needs more resources’, efficiencies could be driven at a national level, while the current structure allows neighborhood policing on a very local level, and cross-border and cross-agency collaboration.
It comes after the head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley came out in support for changing the current 43-force structure to somewhere between eight and 10 regional forces, with potentially one covering all of Yorkshire.
He said the future of policing was ‘heading for failure’ without change, and that as things stand the police cannot cope with sophisticated modern criminals.
"The victim remains local but increasingly the threat does not," he said at a policing reform conference last week, citing the example of children who are "groomed by predators on another continent".
He argued that the current system is struggling to keep pace with these threats, saying: "We have 43 overstretched forces trying to do too much, with too little."
Merging forces would reduce duplication and could free up thousands of roles to be redirected towards front line policing, he believes.
At the start of the year, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood produced a white paper looking at the idea of setting up a National Police Force, with large regional forces.
But the idea appears to have been put on hold under Andy Burnham, with no public comment on whether the reorganisation should continue.
Today, Jo Coles has set out the five principle reasons she believes the change would be harmful.
Primarily she believes: Mayors can work more closely with their own police forces on region-specific problems; the geographic size of an area is less important than its efficiency; regional, cross-border collaboration is already working well; outcomes matter more than organisational size; and the current set up provides robust accountability.
On this last point, she said: “public accountability must remain central. Hillsborough, Orgreave and the murders of Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman damaged public trust. Most officers serve communities with honour and integrity, but the public must know policing always acts in their interests. Clear accountability is essential. Police reform will not create another police officer, shorten our 6,000 miles of roads or remove the demands of 32 million visitors into North Yorkshire.
“The test is not how policing could be organised differently. It is whether changes will make the public safer. Until that case is made with evidence rather than assertion, our priorities should be neighbourhood policing, investment in technology, tackling organised crime, effective regional collaboration and strong public accountability. Mayor David Skaith and I remain determined to ensure criminals are always on the back foot, whatever the size of the police force.”