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Police authorities and their forces face a ‘perfect storm' of sharp budget cuts and major structural reform with the abolition of authorities and new,directly-elected commissioners. Nigel Sternberg outlines some of the challenges Police reform is a key item on the Government's agenda, and includes a commitment to significantly reduce police expenditure over the term of the Parliament. This is notwithstanding that the previous government had achieved savings of £1.5bn from 2004 to 2008. The outcome of the Spending Review, however, was that the Government proposed a 20% real-terms cut to core police funding over the next four financial years. The detail arrived in early December, and each force will, no doubt, now be considering the options. For many forces in England and Wales, the 2011/12 financial year will be difficult. However, the impact is likely to be most significantly felt in 2012/13, when reserves are depleted, early wins have been achieved, and further efficiency savings are still needed. All of this coming at a time when the public perception is likely to be that a reduction in frontline services will result in an increase in crime. Maintaining the effectiveness of the police service in this challenging economic environment is likely to be difficult, at best, for some forces. (Pic:Shutterstock/DarrenP) The Government has also introduced radical proposals for the administration and governance of police forces. The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill – the PRSR Bill – was laid before Parliament on 30 November 2010, and will lead to the abolition of police authorities and the creation of a new post of police and crime commissioner, responsible for holding the chief constable to account (Section 1(7)), securing the maintenance of the police force, and that the force itself is both efficient and effective (Section 1(6)). The challenge for most police authorities and their respective forces will be to make such budget savings as are necessary while, at the same time, meeting increasing service delivery challenges in complex circumstances – effectively doing more with less resource. This would include: stopping any major spend on IT projects and cancelling projects which are not worth completing. reviewing recruitment procedures and staff training needs to ensure that the force and support staff are appropriately equipped to meet the future service demands, and to enable co-ordinated internal recruitment and redeployment processes necessitating minimal redundancies reviewing terms and conditions of employment may be necessary for police staff to establish if any particularly-costly provisions, such as payment for sickness absence and yearly increments, can be amended or removed altogether implementing a compulsory retirement policy, also known as the 30-year rule, under Regulation A19 of the Police Pension Regulations 1987 for regular police officers – that is, not those in some specific senior roles – who have qualified for a pension of two-thirds pensionable pay, and subject to the authority establishing that such action would be in the general interests of efficiency of the force negotiating reductions from major suppliers which could provide immediate reductions in cost. However, it may be possible to drive out further savings by extending arrangements or further negotiation, albeit that this may have to be undertaken in the context of the EU public procurement regime collaboration on the provision of back-office functions with other authorities – they may even get ahead of the game with regard to Section 10 of the PRSR Bill, which will make such activities a duty outsourcing some or all of the back-office functions could result in some savings, and might even result in the acceleration of efficiency programmes stopping all discretionary spend could also provide some immediate quick-wins, although this will often depend on whether this will have a detrimental effect on crime levels, and the skills and experience needed to deliver those elements of the efficiency review, suggested above, or whether they are available internally. However, the options above may only get a police authority so far. To achieve the 20% savings, many police authorities may need to implement and deliver much more significant programmes of transformation – whereby existing policing activities, infrastructure, business processes and ways of working are reviewed and probably fundamentally redesigned – for example, is the balance between the force and the authority correct, are the physical assets such as buildings all needed, does the administrative operation of the authority effectively support the delivery of policing activities, and are the support services reactive or proactive? Collaboration between forces may well not involve too much complexity, requiring formal documenting of the arrangement in the terms of the issue of responsibility and cost – see Section 23 of the Police Act 1996 – together with any other key terms, including duration, insurance and indemnity, and staff transfer terms. Such an arrangement may well result in some savings. However, matters can get more complicated when support functions are involved, especially where one police authority provides services to another, in return for consideration. Nigel Sternberg is a partner at Eversheds which will be holding two law seminars for police forces and authorities next month. For more information, e-mail nigelsternberg@eversheds.com

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Bridging the funding gap on police reform

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