Barry Loveday

The Challenge of Police Reform in England and Wales

As a recent Home Office White Paper ‘Building Communities, Beating Crime’ demonstrates, radical change now confronts the police service. Policing responsibilities and police budgets are being devolved to Basic Command Units and there will be radical internal changes in the make up and role of police and civilian staff in the service. The modernization process now contemplated by the Government can be expected to encompass both a number of issues identified within the 1993 Sheehy Report (particularly in relation to local pay bargaining) and further efficiency reforms that will impact significantly on the role and status of the police and the structure of police forces throughout England and Wales.

Managing the police

For the police service, the period 1979 to1987 was one of mixed blessings. Lauded by Mrs Thatcher as a central plank in her government’s ’law and order’ strategy in the early years, the service was to be ultimately castigated by senior Conservative ministers for letting them down on the crime problem (Baker, 1992). The period demonstrated how difficult it is to take policing out of politics, particularly with a government which moved away from mainstream consensus policy. The increasingly radical programmes adopted by the Conservative government were ultimately to lead to a direct confrontation with the police service upon which it had earlier depended so heavily. But if the Conservative government’s political programme inevitably engulfed the police service, it was also the case that management reforms encouraged across the public sector would also impact upon the police. Management reforms, initiated as early as 1983, have now comprehensively embraced the police service. This is because Audit Commission reports, along with statutory reform, have required the police to respond positively to new managerial imperatives. The application of performance measures is now accepted as commonplace in the police service, while senior officers now grapple with costing outputs and outcomes of police activity. If in the past the police service was ’administered’ rather than managed, this has changed and it is increasingly appropriate to refer to police management as a meaningful activity.

Workforce Modernisation: Implications for the Police Service in England and Wales Evaluating HMIC, 2004 Thematic: Modernising the Police Service:

This article critically evaluates proposals made within HMICs 2004 Thematic on modernising the police service. It identifies the significance of these by reference to the more general framework of New Labours commitment to modernising public services and the implications of this for the police service. It contrasts the response on the part of the police service to the current modernisation programme with that of police associations to the earlier Sheehy Inquiry and Posen Review in the early 1990s. The article assesses the role and status of civilian staff in the police service and draws on comparative data collected by HMIC on the use of such staff in police services around the world. It draws attention to the current use of ‘sworn’ and ‘non-sworn’ officers in a number of police forces abroad which may well provide some insight into the future structure of police services planned for England and Wales. The article thereafter considers the modernisation programme that is currently being piloted within Surrey Police. It considers the potential impact of recent party political competition over police numbers, particularly in relation to any planned reduction in police establishment occasioned by full implementation of Workforce Modernisation within police forces.

Police management and workforce reform in a period of austerity

This chapter considers the impact of both new forms of police governance and the impact of cuts in funding to the police service in England and Wales. It assesses the implications of the 2012 Winsor Independent Review and the HR implications of the recommendations made within it for police officers. It evaluates the potential implications of outsourcing and future internal police management structures. It argues that much more positive workforce modernisation proposals which are evidence based have been sidelined in the movement towards private sector provision to police forces. Finally it explores the potential and real benefits arising from closer collaborative arrangements between both police forces and police and local authorities.

Police and Crime Commissioners: The Changing Landscape of Police Governance in England and Wales: Their Potential Impact on Local Accountability, Police Service Delivery and Community Safety

This article considers the potential impact of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) on the governance and accountability of the police in England and Wales. The article assesses the powers and responsibilities of PCCs and their future responsibility for developing local police strategies. It considers the potential impact of the direct election of PCCs and the relationship between elected PCCs and the chief constable, where future election success may depend on the extent to which the local police force has achieved the objectives set for it by the PCC. The article goes on to consider the changing nature of local electoral politics and the need for local political party infrastructure to sustain an election campaign within individual (and often large) police force areas. The article thereafter considers the potential threat that PCCs as budget holders may represent to existing Community Safety Partnerships, along with the undoubted and continuing benefits that arise from police partnerships with local authorities.

Workforce modernization in the police service: prospects for reform?

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine the significance and the implications of efforts to institute workforce modernization within the police service in England and Wales.Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken uses an analysis of the modernization proposals advanced by Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary as its starting point.Findings – The development of workforce modernization in the police service would appear to have eroded the hitherto “reform‐resistant” nature of policing, however political factors continue to impede reform.Research limitations/implications – Although more evidence concerning the scale and the outcomes of the reform process would be desirable, the main implication of this paper is that workforce modernization in the police is viable, but constrained by political factors.Originality/value – Empirically, the paper focuses on developments in a sector – the police service – that has been neglected by the existing literature on workforce modernization; theoretica...

Contemporary challenges to police management in England and Wales: Developing strategies for effective service delivery

This article seeks to explore the application of a social market approach to the police service. It considers the extent to which a social market structure can be applied to a service which is ultimately dependent on public support for achieving its objectives. Its seeks to challenge assumptions concerning core and ancillary duties and the strict division which the Home Office has attempted to apply to them. It also contrasts public perceptions of what the police should do with those objectives identified by both the government and Audit Commission for the police service.

Workforce modernisation and future Resilience within the police service in England and Wales

This article is based on a presentation given to the National Workforce Modernisation Programme Conference at Leeds in 2008. It argues that the issue of future police resilience should not stand in the way of modernisation and that while it may be used as a defence of the status quo there is growing evidence that reform can be expected to enhance police service delivery. It argues that the nature of police establishment growth has meant that there has been no attempt to match police numbers to police functions and that incremental growth, which has characterised police officer expansion, now means that it is difficult to defend current police numbers. This problem is made worse by the challenge presented by police abstraction rates, which appear to have increased in line with police establishment. It is also suggested that the increasing operational role of police staff is rarely taken into account by HMIC when assessing police performance even though many former police functions are now the responsibility of civilian personnel. As a result the threat to police resilience, used as a defence of current police establishment, may significantly exaggerate the challenge that workforce modernisation represents.

Waving Not Drowning: Chief Constables and the New Configuration of Accountability in the Provinces

This paper looks at the relationship between Chief Constables and police authorities four years after the Police Act 1994. It seeks to explore the concept of managerial accountability which, as a consequence of legislation, replaced electoral accountability as a means of bringing the police to account to the local community. The paper also considers the continuing problem of establishing effective police community links.

Crime policing and the provision of service

Every public service has been subject to the reforming zeal of a Conservative government committed to marketing the public sector in the name of improved efficiency. Yet it was not until the 1990s that the police were subjected to a similar experience. The police service was deemed to be an essential public order force and tool for the government as it embarked on a programme which would inevitably lead to confrontation with public sector unions in the 1980s. As Howard Davies was to argue succinctly in his Social Market Foundation pamphlet on the police: Until the end of the miners’ strike in 1985, there was perhaps a sound political reason for leaving the police undisturbed… The industrial relations confrontations of the early 1980s certainly placed a high premium on the maintenance of an unquestionably loyal, disciplined and strike free police service. Subsequently the logic of non-intervention became less clear. (Davies, 1992: 28)