Festus Akinbusoye is Bedfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner. He is also the Association of Police and Crime Commissioner’s (APCC) national portfolio lead for Prevention.
‘Woke policing’ (whichever way you define it) is far from the biggest obstacle to the policing that British people want and expect today. Another period of de-investment is a greater problem.
Thanks to the investment, especially since 2019 and commitment to recruit 20,000 officers, we are seeing an overall increase in the number of new police officers recruited in England and Wales. This figure now stands at nearly 14,000 new officers, with the remainder to be recruited by 2024.
This investment goes a long way in reversing the fall in funding of policing which commenced following the financial crisis of 2007/2008. A benefit of this re-investment is that more Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Chief Constables are now re-establishing community police teams which became largely non-existent, as forces prioritised reactive response policing as funding reduced. This rightly dealt with immediate ‘threats to life’ jobs, but less priority was given to proactive, problem-solving, visible neighbourhood policing.
Furthermore, the re-investment has given police leadership the opportunity to begin rebuilding the still struggling ranks of detective numbers. The job of rebuilding British policing is far from complete, but as a police chief recently told me, he is no longer having to worry about removing police officers from his books as was done nearly a decade ago – but now he has the worry of how to effectively deal with a much needed, younger, and rapidly growing workforce. He told me:
“This is the type of worry I can happily live with.”
To deliver Home Office targets and the people’s policing priorities locally, the Government must not undo all the excellent work done over the last few years.
There are, however, other areas which need the attention of locally elected PCCs and operationally independent Chief Constables, as we look for more effective and efficient ways of working.
For example, despite the tremendous work done through Bluelight Commercial, a company owned by PCCs and partner agencies, which is currently on track to deliver £70m of savings in its first three years for the 43 forces and eight other Bluelight members, there are still areas where greater collaboration needs consideration.
Though I support the 43-force model, due to the importance of local accountability, it is a concern that there are nearly as many ways of delivering police administration, ranging from human resources, vetting, procurement, Professional Standards, IT deployment and infrastructure etc.
These multifarious systems come at a cost, and it is not just financial.
The disparity in vetting outcomes is a worry, when one force can complete vetting of officers in two months while another can take up to eight months. The recent HMICFRS report into vetting raises questions as to why an applicant can be rejected by one police force, and yet be accepted by another.
In Bedfordshire, we are part of a closer Tri-Force collaboration with Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, but also a wider seven-force collaboration, which has helped provide stronger operational capabilities especially on counter-terrorism and organised crime activity. These regional collaborations are replicated elsewhere across the country with varying degrees of success. These must continue.
Furthermore, while there are elements of policing which must stay local, there are others which are best delivered at the regional, national, or international levels, without being duplicated.
A key area where we also must free up capacity is a rapidly growing cases of ‘non-police’ police jobs such as mental health, missing children, and cancellation of ambulance service because ‘a police officer is present’.
Between 50 per cent and 80 per cent of calls to force control rooms nationally are non-police related calls. In Bedfordshire, 2021 saw approximately 53,000 hours of police time spent on mental health jobs alone. This is the equivalent of an entire police response unit in the force. On average, officers spent 174 minutes per patient in hospitals waiting for handover to NHS staff. Due to lack of provision for vulnerable young children, officers on one occasion spent 48 hours with a child in their care, while on another, they had to stay with the child for 21 hours.
These cases are not unique to Bedfordshire. With this level of police involvement in non-police jobs, it is no surprise that our communities are not feeling the full benefit of the growing number of police officers being recruited. They cannot be patrolling our streets while at the same time sitting in A&E or working as social workers.
These are some of the big obstacles to effective and efficient policing in Britain today. These should be the areas of focus for policy makers and police leadership.
If we want to cut crime and protect the most vulnerable in our communities, we must invest not only in police numbers, but also a more efficient, collaborated support service to help get justice for victims, and get criminals off our streets.