Apparently, the savings will be made by introducing better procurement procedures, offering police forces more freedom to determine where money is best spent on a local level and demanding greater efficiencies both on the frontline and in the back office.
At present, the UK Government spends more on criminal justice and policing than most other political regimes across Europe, yet the level of violent crime remains high.
There’s well-rounded agreement now that finding ways in which to reduce law enforcement costs while still improving frontline services is vital if the police service on home shores is to remain effective.
According to the Home Secretary, the Government will now:
This work is part of a wider project aimed at reforming UK policing and “creating a stronger, fairer and more accountable police force”.
Assessing value for money in UK policing
The Home Secretary was speaking at a summit organised by Reform and KPMG and designed to assess value for money in policing.
As a company, KPMG has done some tremendous work over the last few years in partnership with the Home Office, most notably through the groundbreaking Operation Quest programme.
Operation Quest has improved value for money and generated savings of more than GB pound 100 million pounds per year, while at the same time driving improved frontline performance.
For the police, Quest has meant savings of, on average, GB pound 10 for every GB pound 1 invested. For the public, Quest has realised improved handling of their calls for help, better quality criminal investigations and more offenders brought to justice.
For its part, Reform is now one of the UK’s leading Think Tanks and recently described the Home Office’s policing policy as ‘a model package’.
‘The Government is making police services accountable in the right way to their local electorates,” stated Reform. “It is conducting an independent review of the pay and conditions of the police workforce, arguing that the police should deliver value for money and that there’s no simple link between resources and crime.’
“Our policing reforms truly are a package,” asserted the Home Secretary. “That package addresses the major problems in British policing today, but the primary purpose of our policing reform package is not about saving money. Rather, it’s about cutting crime and protecting the public.”
The proposed reforms are designed to address a series of linked problems. First, the Government recognises that crime is still too high. Despite spending more funds on criminal justice than any other comparable nation, Britain remains a high-crime country.
“Second,” continued Theresa May, “for too long local people have been excluded from local policing decisions. Police forces are public services operating in a democracy. They should be accountable to local people.”
Third, there’s a firm belief in central Government that red tape has tied up police officers and stopped them doing their job, which is to fight crime and criminality.
“Fourth, at the same time as it meddled in local policing and imposed more and more paperwork on officers, central government has previously neglected national and international-level crime,” asserted May.
“And fifth, we now face all of these problems at the same time as we have to deal with the largest deficit in our peacetime history.”
Reducing crime and criminality: the way forward
The Home Secretary feels that “Britain has some of the finest and most courageous police officers” in the world.
It was a Conservative Home Secretary, Robert Peel, who gave gave us the model of modern day policing, which is all about policing by consent. Policing of the public by police who are the public.
It’s about policing built on the foundations of the office of constable, and most would agree it’s a model that has served us well.
However, as the Home Secretary rightly pointed out, Peel also laid down the principle that the best proof of the complete efficiency of the police should be the absence of crime – and we don’t have an absence of crime.
“We currently spend 2.8% of GDP on criminal justice and policing,” stated May. “That is more than any other country in the OECD, and yet last year the British Crime Survey suggested there were 9.5 million crimes in England and Wales, while the risk of an individual being a victim of crime was over 20%.”
Added to that, serious commentators would agree that the level of violent crime remains unacceptably high. The police are recording more than 1,000 incidents of GBH or ABH and about 100 incidents of serious knife crime every day. Muggings and so-called ‘stranger violence’ remain stubbornly high – more than one million offences took place last year.
In short, crime remains too high.
Public accountability: where do we stand?
“The old approach to dealing with this persistent crime was to try to take control of everything from the centre,” outlined the Home Secretary, “and so came the targets, initiatives and bureaucracy along with bucketloads of public money, too. That approach was as misguided as it was unsustainable.”
The default approach of throwing more money at the problem is simply no longer an option. “Quite the contrary,” said May, “but that policy approach was as damaging to policing as the fiscal approach was damaging to our economy. The obsession with targets and bureaucracy led to officers carrying out activity that was, frankly, bizarre and sometimes even counter-productive.”
May offered examples from the vaguely amusing – like snowball fights being recorded as violent crimes – to the more serious (such as the recording of attempts to force open doors or windows, not as burglaries, but as criminal damage in order to keep burglary figures down).
“Or the massaging of violent crime figures by officers stopping to deal with offenders for public order offences, which count as violent crime, and dealing with them instead for being drunk and disorderly, which falls outside recorded crime altogether.”
As far as the Home Secretary’s concerned: “Targets drive perverse incentives, accountability drives improved performance, and that’s why we are transforming police accountability.”
Instead of bureaucratic accountability to Whitehall, the Government will introduce true democratic accountability to the public through the much-discussed and directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners.
“Police and Crime Commissioners will ensure that local policing priorities are focused on what local people want, not on what central Government thinks they want. This simple fact, combined with neighbourhood beat meetings and street-level crime mapping, will truly connect the public back with their local police.”
Given that the Police and Crime Commissioners will also set the police budget, and the level of council tax precept that local people will pay towards policing, they will also have what May described as “a strong incentive and a real mandate” to drive efficiencies and subsequently secure value for money.
Reducing bureaucracy: ending ring-fenced funding
From May’s perspective, the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners means that “we can get the Home Office off the backs of the police.”
This is why the Home Secretary has put in place plans to end the ring-fenced funding which restricts the police’s flexibility.
From 2013, when Police and Crime Commissioners will set their first budgets, May will signal an end to the ring-fencing of all of the central policing grants that have not already been stopped, save only for counter-terrorism.
“It’s why I’ve scrapped the Policing Pledge and confidence target, the PSA targets, the key performance indicators and the Local Area Agreements,” added the Home Secretary. “I want police officers chasing criminals, not chasing targets. I’ve given the police just one single objective – to cut crime.”
Indeed, May has announced a whole series of measures aimed at scrapping police bureaucracy and restoring officer discretion.
“We’ve already scrapped the national requirement for the stop and account form, and cut the reporting requirements for stop and search, saving up to an estimated 800,000 police hours per year,” explained the Home Secretary.
“We’ve also restored police discretion over certain charging decisions, saving up to 50,000 police hours per year, and we’ve issued new Health and Safety guidance that supports officers who do the right thing.”
The plans don’t stop there, though. In May, the Home Secretary announced a series of new measures that show the Government “really means business” when it comes to ‘busting bureaucracy’. They include streamlined HR and crime recording processes, better risk management, a bonfire of doctrines and further charging discretion handed back to officers.
“In total, these measures could save well over 2.5 million hours of police time each year,” suggested May. “That’s time which can be better spent on the frontline. Further, I want to see chief officers following my lead and making it a personal priority to cut their officers’ bureaucracy.”
National Crime Agency in focus
“As we get central Government out of the way of local policing, we can place the focus where it should have been all along,” stated May. “On the fight against national and international-level crime.”
The Home Secretary continued: “Sir Paul Stephenson said last year that our current law enforcement response is only impacting in a meaningful way on 11% of the estimated 6,000 organised crime groups operating in the UK. That is not good enough.”
On that basis, the Home Secretary recently unveiled the National Crime Agency. A powerful body of operational crime fighters, this organisation will tackle organised crime, secure our borders, fight financial and economic crime and look to protect vulnerable children and young people.
As we’ve previously reported on SMT Online, the National Crime Agency will harness intelligence and analysis and harbour specialist capabilities and enforcement powers.
Accountable to the Home Secretary, and with a senior chief constable at its head, this body will form an integral part of our law enforcement community, with strong links to local police forces, the aforementioned Police and Crime Commissioners, the UK Border Agency and other agencies.
“We will back up that enhanced operational capability,” insisted May, “by publishing the country’s first ever cross-Government organised crime strategy.”
While many of the Government’s policing reforms will lead to savings, that’s not the driving force behind them.
“We are introducing Police and Crime Commissioners to better connect police forces with the communities they serve,” said May. “We’re scrapping bureaucracy so that police officers can focus on fighting crime, and we’re introducing the National Crime Agency to improve the fight against national and international-level crime.”
As the Home Secretary has stated several times before, we face the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history, and central Government wishes to see the police service play its part in making the savings necessary to secure our economic future.
“That is the final pillar of our reform programme,” commented May. “Our starting point is HMIC’s report ‘Valuing the Police’. That report found that GB pound 1.15 billion per year – or 12% of national police funding – could be saved if only the least efficient police forces brought themselves up to the average level of efficiency.”
The Home Secretary stated that all forces must raise themselves up to the level not of the average, but of the most efficient forces. That could add another GB pound 350 million of savings to those calculated in HMIC’s report.
Interestingly, HMIC didn’t consider all areas of police spending. They didn’t take into account IT and procurement spend, for example.
“It makes absolutely no sense for the police to be procuring things in 43 different ways. It makes absolutely no sense for the police to have 2,000 different IT systems across 43 forces, as they do at present,” said May.
With a national, joined-up approach, with better contracts, more joint purchasing, a smaller number of different IT systems and greater private sector involvement, the Home Secretary believes we could save another GB pound 350 million and, again, that is over and above the savings which HMIC have identified.
“There is significant work underway in the Home Office and in the police service at the moment to decide how we can realise these savings,” explained May. “I will announce further details during the summer.”
Tom Winsor’s report on police pay
HMIC also did not consider pay, because it was outside their remit, but in an organisation like the police, where GB pound 11 billion – 80% of total revenue spending, in fact – goes on pay, there’s “no question” that pay restraint and pay reform must form part of the package.
“That’s why we believe – subject to any recommendations from the Police Negotiating Board – that the there should be a two-year pay freeze in policing, just as there has been across the public sector. That would save at least GB pound 350 million. Again, this is on top of HMIC’s savings.”
At the same time, and as reported on SMT Online, Tom Winsor is reviewing police pay and conditions to make them fair to officers of the law and fair to the taxpayer.
The first part of Tom Winsor’s report proposed rewarding those with specialist skills, those who are working unsocial hours and those who are on the frontline. The proposals are being considered by the police negotiating bodies, and the Government will consider their recommendations carefully.
“If implemented,” said May, “Tom Winsor’s proposals would give the police service the flexibility it needs to operate in the modern era. The proposals would enable modern management practices to be implemented. They would help the leaders of the service to manage their budgets, maximise officer and staff deployment to frontline roles and enable frontline services to be maintained and improved.”
The Winsor report, then, is categorically not just about making savings – it’s about reforming the police to give chiefs the flexibility to lead.
Fundamental reform: implementing savings
Better ICT and procurement, greater frontline, back office and middle office efficiency and a two-year pay freeze: these savings together would amount to GB pound 2.2 billion a year.
That is more than the GB pound 2.1 billion real terms reduction in central Government funding to the police, and even that does not include the potential savings realised from Winsor or the additional funding that individual forces receive from the local precept.
“But – and this is crucially important – all of these savings can be made without reducing frontline services,” stated the Home Secretary. “The challenge for the police service is to actually implement those savings, and I do not underestimate the scale of that challenge.”
May said that minor improvements here and there will not be sufficient. Doing what has always been done, but just a little bit better, won’t be enough, either.
“What is needed is a fundamental systems approach, looking from top to bottom at whole policing processes. That should start with knowledge of what the public actually want, and Police and Crime Commissioners will hugely help with that.”
From the Government’s perspective, that knowledge should be combined with police officers’ experiences of what is effective at cutting crime and what services are really needed. The police service must then consider how those services can be most efficiently delivered, from the start of the process right through to the very end.
“That’s exactly what they’ve done in West Yorkshire, where they have freed up almost half of their Neighbourhood Policing Team from wasteful activity so they can instead concentrate on proactive work with the public.”
It’s also what they’ve done in Devon and Cornwall, where they are saving more than 5,000 officer hours per year through improved deployment.
“And it’s what they’ve done in Greater Manchester, where they have cut the average time between when a crime is reported and when the case is closed from over 50 days down to just six.”
The right response as far as Theresa May’s concerned is to look at all the tired old ways of doing things with a fresh pair of eyes – it’s to not accept the answer “…but that’s the way we’ve always done things”.
For May and her colleagues in Government, the right response is to make changes that save money and improve services.
“Salami slicing of budgets is not what’s needed. What’s needed is fundamental reform. The result will not only be monetary savings. It will be lower crime, safer communities and a more satisfied, more confident and better served public. This is key. I don’t just want to see the cuts managed. I want to see policing improved.”
