PCC Joy Allen speaks out about Police Reform

“Police Reform must be built on evidence and consent - not change for change’s sake,” she said. “The Government’s policing White Paper sets out an ambitious agenda for reform.

“Those ambitions should be welcomed. Policing does need to evolve, and there are genuine opportunities in the White Paper.

“But reform of this scale must be grounded in evidence, consent and clarity, not a belief that structural change is, in itself, progress.

“Scotland offers an important cautionary tale.

“More than a decade after Scotland moved to a single national police service, the latest independent inspection paints a nuanced but sobering picture.

“Trust in the police as an institution remains high, yet public confidence in local policing has fallen sharply. The proportion of people who believe their local police are doing a good or excellent job has dropped from over 60 per cent before reform to around 45 per cent today.

“Scotland’s reform delivered national capability and consistency. What it struggled to protect was local visibility, responsiveness and accountability. Over time, focus drifted toward national and specialist functions, while neighbourhood confidence quietly ebbed away.

“This was not a failure of officers or leadership. It was a structural consequence of centralisation.

“The same inspection highlights other lessons policymakers should heed.

“Reorganisation did not resolve workforce challenges. Strategic workforce planning remains underdeveloped, absence levels are high, and large numbers of officers are on restricted duties. Structural change scaled these pressures rather than solving them.

“Promised transformation benefits took years to materialise and were difficult to evidence. Centralisation brought consistency, but also complexity, particularly around estates, ICT and long-term investment.

“Governance did not become simpler or more transparent. It became more layered and more distant from public understanding.

“And crucially, once democratic accountability moved away from communities, it did not return.

These lessons matter as England and Wales consider proposals to abolish Police and Crime Commissioners and create larger regional forces.

The PCC model is certainly not perfect, no governance model is. But they provide something fundamental: a single, visible, locally accountable individual responsible for policing. Someone the public can identify, challenge and ultimately remove, unlike deputy mayors who are appointed by elected mayors.

Scotland teaches us a simple truth:

• You can centralise policing and still lose the confidence of the communities it serves.  That does not mean reform should be resisted. It means it should be done properly.
• Change to the policing landscape should be based on clear evidence that it will improve outcomes, not on assumptions about scale.
• Reform can strengthen policing. But change for change’s sake, without evidence and without the public on board, risks weakening the very foundations on which policing depends.

Ends

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