3 Visions for the Future of Police Collaboration – Tom’s View

With another tight spending round for forces across England and Wales and a much more reform-minded Home Office, policing is undoubtedly facing a fresh wave of major change.  

We’ve written before about what this might mean for how policing is structured and organised. It includes: 

• A stronger centre driving common standards across policing – something I covered in a previous blog (1) launching a paper from Leapwise and the Police Foundation; 
• A radical focus on driving new savings, especially around procurement; 
• A new approach to workforce reform – though the tired political fixation on officer numbers above all else has significantly weakened the potential scope of this;  
• A new set of potential collaborations at the regional level. 

Individually, each of these single elements would be a major programme of change in itself. And that’s all while the Government tries to do the core daily work of improving police performance and delivering on its manifesto commitments. Remember that Labour’s Safer Streets mission is incredibly ambitious – things like halving violence against women and girls or boosting confidence in forces to the highest levels won’t come easily, especially with funding still squeezed. 

So far, what we’ve heard from the Home Office is a lot of focus around that stronger centre of policing. In particular, a new National Centre of Policing that will drive commercial efficiencies and performance standards. By contrast, we’ve heard less about another area of reform: regional collaborations. These could unlock financial savings through shared back-office functions or help develop capabilities for responding to increasingly borderless serious and organised crime, fraud, and terrorism. 

Police collaboration is (already) complex   

Anyone familiar with policing will know that existing regional and local collaborations are already highly complex. Some, such as the system used to manage counter-terrorism, look more devolved than they really are. Regional CT operations are important, but they report into the National CT Policing HQ, with both the resources and the relevant accountabilities actually held nationally. 

In addition, regional and local collaborations differ in how broadly they focus. There are 10 Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) with a clear remit that – as the name suggests – predominantly operate within that regional tier. But there are other more localised, bottom-up collaborations across policing with a wider set of goals. Norfolk and Suffolk, who are currently optimising (2) their longstanding collaboration approach, are a good example of that. The Thames Valley Police and Hampshire model is another useful case study.   

Finally, many ‘police’ collaborations are in fact nothing of the sort. They’re really much wider cross-public sector efforts. Police forces frequently work with partners in local government, probation and fire, sharing buildings and occasionally some transactional services, while also working together on operational delivery. Some outsourced service models still persist too, though tellingly, the most extensive of these have been scrapped in recent years.   

Isn’t this all too complex and chaotic to bother with?  

In the face of all this complexity, you can see why police reformers might decide to give the ‘middle tier’ a wide berth. Top-down restructuring hasn’t ended well in the past. 

In the mid-2000s, attempted force mergers had lofty ideals but, encountering significant cost and confusion, were ultimately aborted. In the 2010s, efforts to drive police and force collaboration were time-consuming and delivered little in the way of savings. With responsibility for fire now moving to MHCLG, those services might be more likely to collaborate with local government than police moving forward. Even some high-profile intra-policing collaborations have been reversed at significant cost – most noticeably the Warwickshire and West Mercia (3) police collaboration. 

However, I think this type of police reform remains essential. That’s for at least three reasons: 

1. Regional capabilities are a crucial part of modern policing. Specialist capabilities, such as for challenging public order events or very complex investigations, naturally sit in this ‘middle tier.’ A national approach is too far from that operational frontline and demand is too volatile for individual forces to handle this themselves. A strong regional tier is key to effective operational policing. 
2. The back-office efficiency opportunities are significant. If we look at Norfolk and Suffolk, their collaboration has delivered multi-million pound savings (4)  that have helped maintain services against a backdrop of constant financial pressures. Policing can’t afford to overlook this financial prize. 
3. National policing landscape changes and a major set of devolution reforms are already on the way. These will almost certainly have implications for what needs to be done in the regional tier. Avoiding this area altogether doesn’t make sense when it holds a range of important interdependencies with both those efforts. 

Competing visions for this new wave of collaboration 

In my view, there are 3 possible approaches that could be taken as part of this new wave of collaboration. All of them have strengths and weaknesses and I’m in the foothills of trying to understand which I think is most sensible. 

1. Go big on the regional approach. We already have a regional tier in policing for CT and SOC that could be built on. A commitment to double-down on the regional model might see closer integration of CT, SOC and other specialist capabilities within regional hubs or it could mean regional centres of excellence for crucial police support functions. It would be radical, disruptive and risky, with difficult decisions about where these strengthened regions would work to. That’s because in the current model CT regions are accountable nationally and ROCUs to local forces.  
2. Keep it ad-hoc. Another model might focus on strengthening the organic and often complex collaborations we already see. Existing collaborations could be deepened and new ones created where forces have similar goals and financial incentives. With a new wave of devolution meaning that two forces will (in some places) soon be overseen by one Mayoralty, tactical mergers might come into consideration. This approach is pragmatic, but can forces make this more ad-hoc approach work well? 
3. Embrace a thin middle. The new National Centre of Policing will probably see a continued regional tier for CT and SOC, but it could allow regional collaboration on enabling services to be reduced. With a national centre doing more, should localised collaborations ultimately do less? If services such as vetting or firearms licensing shift to a nationalised delivery model, there would simply be less activity at that local and regional level. Is there a case for some strategic decline here?   

Nobody yet has the answer on which vision is the most sensible. Of course, the shape of the devolution agenda and the new National Centre will both influence which approach ultimately proves most effective.  

So, what do you think? You can share your views with us at the link below.