Plans to slash the number of police forces in England and Wales represent a “real threat” to local policing and seriously undermine Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda, leading mayors have said.
Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner and Britain’s top officer, called on Friday for the 43 forces of England and Wales to be cut to “eight to 10” super forces.
The changes were backed by the chief constables of other forces, including Greater Manchester police, but there is disagreement within senior policing about how radical the reduction should be.
Several of England’s mayors and police and crime commissioners criticised Rowley’s proposals on Friday, with some expressing anger privately at what they saw as an attempt to bounce the prime minister into the biggest change in policing in a generation.
Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool city region and a close friend of the prime minister, called the proposals “the wolf of centralisation dressed up in sheep’s clothing” that would undermine local accountability.
He added: “The idea that we’d somehow get better policing by swallowing local forces up into a handful of enormous regional super-forces runs counter to the devolution agenda.”
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, announced plans in January to radically reduce the number of police forces in England and Wales and commissioned an official review by Bernard Hogan-Howe, the former Met police commissioner.
The review, which has not yet been published, is understood to contain a range of how many larger forces there should be under the new model, from nine to 18, down from the current 43.
Many of England’s mayors believe police forces should align with mayoral boundaries to allow them greater oversight, as opposed to “super-forces” that would span big cities alongside huge expanses of smaller towns, villages and rural areas.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is understood to be concerned that the radical changes may damage accountability and neighbourhood policing. The Met, for example, which covers almost all of London, could swallow up the small City of London force, which covers the square mile.
One mayor, who did not want to be named, said they believed the prime minister would settle on aligning police forces to mayoral regions, which would slash the number of forces by about half – but still be around twice as many as suggested by Rowley and other police chiefs.
They said: “There is going to be significant reform but the solution is going to be somewhere in the middle.
“That’s where I feel Andy is: take a path which gives mayors continuous boundaries and gives them oversight of chief constables because that’s a sensible thing that’s worked. Andy’s seen that in Manchester and I don’t think he’s minded to throw that out.”
Bev Craig, the Greater Manchester mayor, said on Friday she would urge the government not to implement the most radical of Rowley’s plans. “We’ve proven what can happen when local accountability, at a geographic level that makes sense, works.”
David Skaith, the mayor of York and North Yorkshire, described the proposals as a “real threat” to local policing and said he would “not be lectured” by Rowley on gold-standard law enforcement. He said: “Let’s not sit here and say the Met has a fantastic track record. It certainly does not.”
Kim McGuinness, the mayor of north-east England, said: “A locally accountable police force is the cornerstone of the criminal justice system, and we have to be very careful about undoing a model which has underpinned successful British policing for generations.
“What we definitely do not need is the head of London’s very troubled police force coming north and telling us how policing should work. The Met is not in a position to preach to northern police forces.”
Rowley, in his Manchester speech, said police would fail without radical change and said reforms would strengthen local policing, not weaken it. “We cannot ask local officers to confront international criminal networks without the strength of a wider service behind them,” he said.
“This is not a choice between neighbourhood policing and specialist capability. Strong local policing needs both. Reform must deliver both.”
Other senior police sources say it is clear the Treasury will provide no more money for law enforcement with the hopes that the package of changes will eventually free up hundreds of millions of pounds for officers on the beat and updating antiquated technology.
Stephen Watson, the Greater Manchester police chief constable, said failing to reform policing would be “decline by design” and that the case for change was “essential and unanswerable”.
He added: “It’s an incontrovertible fact that we have, tied up in the 43-force model, 43 headquarters, 43 chiefs, 43 deputies, 43 IT directors, 43 HR directors, 43 procurement specialists, 43 different IT systems.
“There is a very hard-nosed business case to be made. It’s not pie in the sky. And it seems to me that if any commercial entity were to be set up in the style of British policing, they would not remain solvent for very long at all.”
