Commissioner opposes police force mergers

Hertfordshire's Police & Crime Commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards has spoken out against proposals to merge the county's constabulary with neighbouring forces covering several counties.

Reports in The Times, the number of police forces in England and Wales could be reduced to as few as 12 under 'generational' reforms being considered by the home secretary.

The PCC says this would risk turning policing into a remote and unaccountable force detached from the communities it exists to police.

Hertfordshire Constabulary has served the county since 1841 and is one of 43 local constabularies.

Jonathan Ash-Edwards said: "Hertfordshire is not an administrative inconvenience on a Whitehall map. It is an ambitious county that is one of the safest places to live in the UK because it has a county police force focused on the county’s crime challenges and priorities.

"Local residents rightly expect decisions about their policing and community safety to be made locally, not having to compete for attention from a distant regional command structure based miles away with little understanding of local concerns. While crime doesn’t respect administrative borders, every crime has a local footprint and harms a victim living in a local community.

"Hertfordshire’s policing should be led by people based in Hertfordshire and accountable to Hertfordshire, not run by regional commanders based in Ipswich or Peterborough.

"With the government’s announcement of the end of the PCC model, this isn’t about me or my role, it’s about what is right to keep the people of Hertfordshire safe. I know that Hertfordshire’s police officers and staff take real pride in their connection to the county they serve.

"Bigger does not mean better. Creating twelve versions of the Metropolitan Police, the police force that is less trusted by its communities and solves less crime than the average, will not improve policing. Super-sized regional forces would be slower to respond, less interested in local priorities, harder to hold to account and more likely to divert resources away from neighbourhood policing – the very model the public consistently value the most.

"Local, accountable policing matters. It is fundamental to the British model of ‘policing by consent’ that police forces are not arms of the state. That becomes more likely the less local and the more controlled by the Home Secretary they are.

"In under a month, the government has scrapped the public’s democratically elected oversight of policing and proposed the abolition of jury trials. Now it’s regional police forces. It’s clear the government has a broader agenda to enact major constitutional changes for which it has no mandate.

"Time and time again, taxpayers see that top-down public sector reorganisations and mergers are expensive, distracting and rarely deliver the savings and benefits promised. At a time when every pound should be going into frontline policing and crime fighting, this regional reorganisation risks wasting millions on management reshuffles, consultants, rebranding and empire building.

"Choosing to spend the coming years reorganising policing mean the government’s missions to halve violence against women and girls and knife crime will be completely unachievable, putting more people at risk of harm. The government should instead concentrate on the sensible reforms that could be made to free up money in local police forces, empowering them to cut crime and deliver the policing their communities need".