Police reform: what to expect?

For over a week now, government ministers and police chiefs have been 'rolling the pitch' for what is being billed as the biggest overhaul of policing in half a century.

A carefully co-ordinated communications campaign, involving set-piece interviews, newspaper op eds and filming opportunities, has been constructed ahead of the long-awaited White Paper on police reform, which is expected to be published on Monday (January 26).

The aim of the Home Office press strategy for the paper, titled 'From local to national: a new model for policing', is two-fold. First, to highlight key announcements and other policies that might otherwise go unnoticed when the document is released, and more important, to set out the arguments which underpin the need for such a major shake-up.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has been instrumental in driving the police reform agenda, has played a major part in the preview coverage, but the centrepiece was a BBC story on Thursday evening, privately described by one Home Office insider as a 'plant the flag' moment. The BBC revealed that the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was promising to "significantly"cut the number of police forces, but, like many of the expected proposals, it will be years before it happens, if at all.

Indeed, while the policing world is almost giddy at the prospect of the White Paper, it is unlikely to provoke huge interest among the wider public. Amending police structures, processes and institutions won't affect people's lives in the short, or even the medium, term. The document will be a roadmap towards a more efficient and effective police service in the decades to come; it is not intended as an urgent plan of action to address our immediate concerns about safety on the streets, crime and anti-social behaviour.

So, what can we expect?

A more coherent structure

The Paper will say the 43-force model is bureaucratic and wastes money, with some forces performing far worse than others. It will suggest moving to a system under which a smaller number of bigger forces tackle serious and organised crime, murders, county-lines gangs and drug trafficking. There will be an independent review to determine how many forces there should be and where - but the changes won't be in place until the end of the next Parliament, in around 2034.

As part of the structural shake-up, officers in new Local Policing Areas - in every borough, town or city across England - will focus on neighbourhood policing and investigating shoplifting, phone theft and anti-social behaviour. How these areas will be governed and connected to larger forces is unclear at the moment.

These are ambitious proposals and, wisely, given their political sensitivity they are not being rushed. Re-structuring on such a scale requires up-front investment before any savings are realised - money which the Treasury will be reluctant to part with until it has seen a detailed business case. However, the danger of dragging the process out, by holding another review with a timescale stretching well into the next decade, is that the impetus for reform may be lost and the proponents of it (a group of chiefs known as the 'system leaders' ) will have retired.

A stronger centre

The Home Office is already committed to launching a new National Centre of Policing which will include specialist and support functions like forensics, aviation and IT. It may also bring together the police procurement company, BlueLight Commercial, and the Police Digital Service, a technology organisation, in an attempt to generate savings to reinvest into frontline policing. Where the centre will be based - in the Home Office, the College of Policing, or as a separate stand-alone body - is yet to be announced.

Under Labour, the Home Office has already begun to 'lean in' more to policing, taking a more interventionist approach than under the Conservatives. I expect there will be further steps in that direction in the White Paper, with the Home Secretary granted powers to sack chief constables, for example. The party's general election manifesto in 2024 also pledged to give the policing watchdog, HMICFRS, the ability to intervene in failing forces.

It will be crucial to get the management of the new National Centre of Policing right and ensure that it doesn't simply add another layer of red tape to a system that is already cluttered with multiple overlapping organisations.

Funding reform...

Police forces receive funding from two main sources: direct grants from the Home Office, and a portion of the council tax, known as the police precept. The system is convoluted and the formula used to calculate how much money is dished out is two decades out-of-date. A new formula was developed by the department several years ago but it hasn't been implemented because of its political toxicity: some areas would benefit but others would lose out. Officials have also discussed giving the Home Secretary greater powers over funding so that certain priority programmes and projects are properly implemented locally. A commitment to guaranteed multi-year funding for policing has been under consideration as well.

New structural arrangements will necessitate changes to the funding formula, but if the White Paper doesn't address acute funding disparities in the short-term, with some constabularies on the brink of going bust, it will be a terrible missed opportunity.

Changes to the workforce

"Labour recognises recruitment challenges, particularly for detectives, so we will roll out a direct entry scheme for detectives to boost investigation skills." That was another pledge in the election manifesto, so it would be a surprise if it were not to be included in the White Paper. It may also contain suggestions for widening the pool of new police recruits to include those with digital skills and people with experience in other fields who are looking to switch career without having to start out as a constable. Such schemes have been tried before but have fallen out of favour.

Mahmood has already signalled her intentions in this area by scrapping the officer maintenance grant, which penalises forces if they fail to hit targets on the number of police officers. Many chief constables loathe the target rule because, on tight budgets, it means they must hire officers rather than civilian staff with specialist skills. The result is that thousands of fully-warranted and trained police officers are stuck doing vital back-office support work that could, and should, be done by civilian employees. Previous home secretaries had refused to axe the grant worried that it would lead to a drop in officer numbers for which they would take the political flak. In future, there will be a ring-fenced fund to ensure a set number of officers are deployed to neighbourhoods.

The police service needs diverse forms of entry and more flexible arrangements to allow officers to take career breaks and gain experience in other sectors. The Home Secretary has demonstrated political nerve by moving to end the obsession with police officer numbers; it's to be hoped that the White Paper comes up with other ways to broaden the mix and skills of the workforce.

Higher standards and greater professionalism

In the past 18 months, the Government has brought in a series of measures to tighten rules around vetting and misconduct, but more sweeping changes are likely to be suggested in the White Paper. Many of the recommendations of Lady Elish Angiolini, who led a review into the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer, have still to be implemented, including in-person interviews and home visits for every police officer candidate.

Ministers have also been pressed to introduce a policing 'Licence to Practise', as there is in medicine. Each officer would have to meet certain conditions to obtain a licence, such as showing they had the core skills, knowledge and ethical standards required for policing.  The licence would be renewed every five years if the officer was able to demonstrate professional development - gaining qualifications, passing an interview or presenting a portfolio of activities and achievements. An officer would be given support to secure renewal; if they repeatedly failed to do so, their licence would be removed and they wouldn’t be able to work as a police officer.

The idea of a policing licence was put forward in a report in 2022 by the independent Police Foundation think-tank. Last year, its then-director and author, Rick Muir, was recruited by Yvette Cooper, when she was Home Secretary, to work on the White Paper. The College of Policing also backs the move.

A Licence to Practise would be a bold and radical step to further professionalise policing. But the Government would have to overcome concerns that it would be a costly and bureaucratic tick-box exercise without extra investment in training.

Better governance and accountability

The decision to ditch police and crime commissioners in 2028, announced last November, presents real opportunities to design a more robust model of police accountability in England and Wales. In certain areas, mayors or their appointed deputies will oversee forces, as some already do; in others it is likely to be a panel which includes councillors or council leaders. The White Paper is expected to include more detailed proposals.

The aim must be, first, for a clear and simple system that commands public confidence; and second, for arrangements which build co-operation between local policing leaders and those responsible for other public services, such as the courts, probation and prisons.

A move for counter-terrorism policing - Britain's FBI?

There are indications that the White Paper might propose transferring national responsibility for counter-terrorism policing from the Met to the National Crime Agency (NCA), making the NCA the most powerful law enforcement body in the UK, Britain's version of the FBI.

The move has been mooted for some years and was seriously looked at by Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary between 2010 and 2016. The Commons Home Affairs Committee recommended the switch, in 2012, but at the time police leaders were vehemently against it arguing that the existing set-up facilitated "links between the international arena and the streets of our neighbourhoods". Now, however, opposition, especially in the Met, has softened.

A paper co-written by Muir and published by the Home Office in November 2024 outlined the advantages of housing the NCA and the counter-terrorism command under one roof, potentially in a new central agency with other functions.

"It would build interoperability between the counter terrorism space and the serious and organised crime space, which would bring significant operational benefits given the overlap between criminality in these spaces," said the review. "It would create a much simpler national landscape, with benefits in terms of strategic clarity, whole system coordination and reduced costs.

"It would resolve the accountability problem within the Metropolitan Police of having to be both accountable to the Home Secretary (because of its national functions) and to the Mayor of London, and would enable the Met to focus on policing London with national capabilities held elsewhere," said the report.

The old adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the strongest argument against meddling with counter terrorism policing. It is well resourced, works closely with MI5, the Security Service, and is highly regarded in the UK and across the world. Transferring oversight and management to another organisation could be hugely disruptive and distracting at a time of global uncertainty and instability.