Labour’s 2024 manifesto wasn’t short of ambition around policing. In fact, with missions that committed to funding 13,000 more neighbourhood policing personnel, identifying major efficiencies, and halving knife crime and violence against women and girls, they were clearly pushing the limits of what seemed achievable.
One year into the Government’s term, still further commitments have built up, including details about how the Home Secretary intends to deliver on these ambitions. In November, she announced the creation of a new Police Performance and Standards Unit in the Home Office and, drawing on recommendations from Leapwise and the Police Foundation, a new National Centre of Policing to bring together underpowered national policing functions into a single organisation to lead much-needed improvements in police commercial, technology, forensics, productivity, and standards.
Change has been quietly accelerating. But there’s also much uncertainty. High-profile leaders like Met Commissioner Mark Rowley are calling for further radical changes, including force mergers. The Treasury, meanwhile, has pulled up the drawbridge. While policing fared better than other parts of the Home Office, the budget settlement appears to be barely sufficient to meet officer funding commitments, let alone a new wave of change.
Four hopes for the year ahead
Leapwise has been strongly supportive of the police reform agenda, but a period of change will create inevitable uncertainty for forces to navigate. Here are our suggestions for how the Government and police leaders can handle police reform in the year ahead:
- Maintain the ambition, but prioritise reform for this Parliament
- Accelerate early wins
- Act locally, without waiting for miracles
- Work as one system
1. Maintain the ambition, but prioritise reform for this Parliament
If we examine the Home Office plans, initiatives from other departments, and all the ideas being promoted by other police leaders, the police reform agenda suddenly looks vast. It’s certainly of a similar scale to the last big wave of change in the 2010 Parliament, which saw the creation of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and the National Crime Agency, alongside a shift in police focus towards ‘private sphere’ crimes such as domestic violence.
While Labour’s Safer Streets mission sets the end goals, it’s worth listing out the changes currently being considered to get there:
- 13,000 more neighbourhood policing roles
- A new National Centre of Policing (even though the precise scope of this body is yet to be confirmed)
- A new Police Standards Unit, creating a fresh police performance framework and improvement regime
- 6+ combined authority Mayors taking over police oversight from existing PCCs
- A programme of efficiency and collaboration (PECP) targeting over £100 million a year of savings
- Review of the police funding formula (promoted by cross-party PCC finance leads)
- Top-down force mergers (as floated by police leaders)
The Policing White Paper, now set for autumn this year (rather than its original winter 2024 planned publication date), will pull much of this together. But while an expansive White Paper with a long-term police reform vision is a good thing, it’s crucial for the Government and policing to be clear about how they will prioritise and sequence reforms. Imagine it as four simple categories:
- Immediate change – definitive changes that the Government hopes will already be delivering practical results by the end of this Parliament
- Near-term reform – changes the Government is planning to introduce by the end of this Parliament
- ‘Looking at’ in the next Parliament – changes the Government wants to make, should it secure another term
- ‘Considering’ in the next Parliament – changes the Government might look at in future (in practice, this often means kicking something into the long grass)
Prioritising like this might seem less important than the headline ambitions, but it’s the only way to be successful. Why? Well, policing isn’t flush with cash, so clarity about where to focus change resources is key. Similarly, it removes some uncertainty, which means local leaders will be less likely to delay decisions while they await national decisions. And finally, any change has blockers – the Government should be clear what fights it’s committed to and, by extension, which groups it’s willing to challenge to make them happen.
2. Accelerate early wins
Our second hope is that we start to see on-the-ground results, because ‘easier’ wins are being prioritised and pushed through for the benefit of the public.
This seems to be happening around the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee and efforts to improve mobilisation of police presence to prevent the kind of disorder that swept the country last summer.
But there are other ‘quick wins’ that should be happening fast: a new national approach to fleet procurement, big progress on rolling out proven technologies like rapid video response and live facial recognition (a topic of a future paper by our Leapwise colleague James Sweetland), and continued improvements in standards and performance.
With changes prioritised (see above), the key milestones for reform can be built into a clear roadmap. With that greater certainty, local forces and partners can plan effectively, while continuing to deliver the usual day-to-day operations.
3. Act locally, without waiting for miracles
The truth is that most of the benefits of the national police reform agenda won’t be seen until the next parliament and we know the Treasury is unlikely to release the purse-strings soon. Inevitably, this creates a gap. Local forces cannot wait around for national reforms to happen and need to develop their own plans to deliver the best possible service locally.
Local changes will need to be designed with a comprehensive understanding of what is happening nationally – hence the need for the roadmap! But, in our work with forces, we consistently find that forces who resist the temptation to ‘salami slice’ in response to financial pressures can find major efficiency and performance improvement opportunities through a more considered approach. Whether that’s investing in leadership support to help frontline leaders build high-performing teams or redesigning processes to reduce waste, the prizes are there for the taking.
One specific thing the Government could do is give forces much more flexibility over the mix of officers and staff they recruit. As we’ve shared in a recent blog, enabling forces to use staff in back-office functions through a less restrictive approach than we saw with Uplift could release at least £55m per year across policing in England and Wales.
4. Work as one system
With pressure on public sector bodies to deliver quickly (with limited funding), there’s a danger that collaboration goes out of the window. Moving alone feels fast, especially if everyone in your team or department are rowing in the same direction. By contrast, moving as a system can be slow and painful, but it is where some of the most sustained improvements in public services can come from.
There are some big prizes that can be found through systemic action. Our work on Out-of-Court-Disposals shows that uptake varies massively across forces, with some still sending those charged with low level offences to court as standard. That might sound like a good thing, but in practice, it results in slower justice for victims, huge costs (for courts and policing), and ultimately equal or lesser penalties anyway. Similarly, policing is busy investing in neighbourhood and town centres, but the response from some local authorities is to reduce their own activities and support. This means the public loses out on potential safety gains, and policing loses out on opportunities for more innovative partnership models. A systemic approach is always the better path.
Cautious optimism
We remain cautiously optimistic about the police reform agenda. With Government and system leaders aligned on the need to do things differently – even if funding remains profoundly challenging – there is scope to deliver meaningful changes. It just takes a prioritised approach, complemented by smart work at the national and local level.
To learn more about Leapwise’s work on national police reform or how we’re helping local leaders be proactive in the face of change, click the button below.