The national savings challenge
In a recent Leapwise blog, we talked about the local pathways to delivering sustainable savings within policing. We called on forces to avoid the tempting simplicity of ‘salami slicing’ or simply applying across–the–board budget cuts to achieve savings. Instead, they need to make well-targeted changes that deliver value for money, and build the muscles needed to deliver more productive, transformed services.
Local policing doesn’t work in a vacuum, of course. Forces draw on national functions and services, such as the College of Policing’s curriculum and training offer, IT systems run by the Home Office and Police Digital Service, and services provided by BlueLight Commercial. Above all, they are deeply affected by the Home Office, which is taking a more hands-on approach under the new Labour Government.
What we know so far
Labour’s headline policing and crime mission for government – ‘Make Britain’s streets safe’ (1) – is highly ambitious. Halving violence against women and girls, halving knife crime incidents and raising confidence in every police force are all difficult goals to achieve, even with their decade-long timeframe.
Alongside this, Labour’s key police savings policy is an efficiency and collaboration programme for England and Wales. Its manifesto (2) said that this will set “nation-wide standards for procurement and establish shared services and specialist functions to drive down costs.” The projected £400m in annual savings will, Labour said, fund 13,000 additional neighbourhood cops (a mix of officers, PCSOs and specials) and specialist domestic abuse advisers in police control rooms.
But cashable savings shouldn’t be the only priority. Efficiencies that make the work of frontline officers easier – helping them become more effective at solving crime – are important too. So, what are the national pathways to unlocking these crucial savings?
Four national paths to savings
There are four areas where national action could deliver savings for policing overall, and supplement local efficiency drives:
- Commercial savings and procurement
- National solutions
- Shared services and regional collaboration
- Workforce mix and pay
1. Commercial savings and procurement
This first pathway is already at the heart of Labour’s plans: centralising commercial activities. Force-by-force requirements for equipment, technology and facilities will always vary slightly, but policing’s current approach is, in our view, decentralised to a fault.
The right vehicles for policing central Manchester will be different to those needed in rural Devon, but it’s estimated that there are over 50 vehicle types being purchased across policing today. Forces often still develop their own fleet requirements, filter through options, run tests and negotiate with major suppliers – all at significant cost. A national model that identifies, for example, ten vehicles suited to different contexts, tests them centrally (or perhaps in a couple of forces), and negotiates with suppliers once (rather than 43 times) would drive major efficiencies, with no negative operational impact.
It’s not just about vehicles. Labour’s own Freedom of Information Act research (3) shows how one force paid £20 for police batons, while another spent more than £120. A high-performance vehicle costs Merseyside £55,000, but in another force, this somehow comes in at less than half that sum (£27,000). And some forces aren’t yet accessing the best tariffs for buying gas and electricity, as negotiated by the Crown Commercial Service.
There is already one central police procurement organisation that forces can choose to work with: BlueLight Commercial. It has already shown that a centralised body can deliver significant economies of scale. Its annual report for 2022-2023 (4) highlights £34.7m of cashable savings and £23m of efficiency savings in areas such as fleet and forensics. Far more could be saved if further forces opted into its services.
Some standardisation of requirements would be a good thing – but a centralised commercial body can (and should) accommodate necessary local variation. It can buy and distribute extra uniform items for officers in Northumbria Police (who may be posted as far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed). It can buy a software solution for the eight forces that use it, rather than requiring everyone to buy the same system. And in some areas, like catering or elements of facilities management, local suppliers who understand local logistics often offer the best value – meaning national solutions should be avoided.
2. National solutions
It’s not just with procurement that national solutions can generate savings. Services such as police vetting, still largely administered at force level, could be delivered once nationally on behalf of forces – driving efficiency and better managing risks. And innovative solutions first delivered at force level, such as Rapid Video Response, can be evaluated and replicated through national action. The College of Policing’s new Centre for Police Productivity will play an important role on this.
Perhaps the best example of national standards reducing service demand is Humberside Police’s ‘Right Care, Right Person’ mental health demand reduction model – something we talked about in our previous police efficiency blog. (5) After its success at the force level, key government departments and central policing bodies reached a national partnership agreement (6) in July 2023 to scale up that model across all 43 forces and deliver system-wide benefits. In the Met, for example, it has led to 6,000 fewer mental health deployments per month (7) – releasing 34,000 hours of officer capacity to focus on crime demand. And New Zealand Police have recently announced their own version (8) too. This model doesn’t deliver cashable savings, but it will improve outcomes for the public.
Exactly what level of national services is best – and how much they could save – isn’t yet clear. But the prize is significant, even if implementing such changes will likely require revisions to national police decision-making structures and the remits of national policing bodies.
3. Shared services and regional collaboration
In the absence of national solutions, local and regional level collaborations can also drive efficiencies. These can affect both the back office and critical capabilities for tackling serious and organised crime, counter-terrorism, fraud and cyber-crime.
There’s a huge diversity of shared service models across England and Wales. They range from regional models – e.g. the East of England Seven Force Strategic Collaboration Programme (9) – to sophisticated collaborations across two or three forces, such as Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, or Norfolk and Suffolk (who are currently optimising their approach). There are also collaborations beyond policing – forces working with partners in local government, probation and fire, sharing buildings and occasionally transactional services, and some outsourced service models (though tellingly, the most extensive have been scrapped in recent years).
If this sounds confusing, it’s because it is. All these different collaboration structures make our fragmented governance landscape even more complex. And yet, at their best, they add significant value: Norfolk and Suffolk’s collaboration has delivered multi-million pound savings (10) to maintain service against a backdrop of constant financial pressures. There’s scope to take these further, especially if rethinking the 43–force model isn’t on the cards.
The big options for doing this are:
- Pursuing a regional model for enabling services – mirroring the regional structures for Counter-Terrorism Policing.
- Doubling down on the organic (and complex) collaboration approach we already take – this might mean optimising existing collaborations or standing up new ones, on the grounds that they work well when forces face similar issues and have aligned goals.
- Focusing on existing regional (and national) structures for Serious and Organised Crime and Counter-Terrorism – there’s significant scope for these two parts of policing to work even more collaboratively, sharing data, technology and specialist staff skills given how closely connected these parts of police business are.
- Avoiding this type of approach because it’s so complex – and instead focusing on where national solutions will deliver equal or additional benefits.
4. Workforce mix and pay challenges
Another potential pathway to national savings lies in workforce mix and pay – though both these options will be profoundly difficult.
A common criticism of the Police Uplift Programme was its relentless officer-focus. There was no flexibility for forces to recruit to other roles, like police staff investigators or analysts, with a simple political logic behind this. Boosting the total supply of police officers is always a vote-winner – especially with a nice round number like 20,000 – but this restrictive approach reduced effectiveness. Many forces now have police officers (generally paid much more than staff) handling work that staff could do more effectively and at lower cost.
Unfortunately, Labour’s plans suggest more of the same. Its manifesto commitment for 13,000 more neighbourhood officers appears to lock us further into that constrained model of workforce growth. So, in the short term, workforce mix isn’t a viable pathway to savings – shifting to staff while meeting existing policy promises will be very difficult. But a less restrictive approach from central government might unlock some sensible savings during a potential second term in office.
Pay won’t be much easier. As the NPCC’s evidence to the police pay review bodies (11) noted, officers faced real-terms pay reductions of around 16% between 2010 – 2024. And this aligns with the wider picture of public sector pay squeezes in areas like health.
With inflation at 2%, the prospect of a below-inflation pay bump is much less politically challenging than when prices were rising at five times that rate. But the potential backlash – given the legacy of pay freezes – and the potential negative effects on recruitment and retention may outweigh the scope for genuine savings.
Short-term pain, long-term gain
Many in policing are pessimistic about the financial picture – and with good reason. Budgets will remain squeezed, policing really does face Austerity 2.0 (as we warned (12) earlier this year), and the low-hanging fruit is long gone. Delivering savings now is even harder than it was through the long austerity period.
And yet, there are reasons to think some further savings can be made, even if the Home Office must be extremely careful not to cut so deep that it makes its Safer Streets mission impossible to deliver.
At Leapwise, we support clients working both nationally and locally as they try to deliver results within this difficult financial situation. Our honest assessment is that the tough decisions are already with us. Organisations that start work on the efficiency agenda now will have the best chance of protecting services for the public. Those that wait will be forced to act in haste; that will make high-quality service delivery must harder to maintain.
We want to stimulate debate and information sharing as the public sector faces down these challenges. We’d love to hear from those trying to make smart changes locally and nationally, and share more detail about what we think’s working too.
Please get in contact to share your perspectives and experiences with us.
