Mahmood and Burnham brace for the next police force merger row

A political hand grenade is hurtling towards the Home Office. In the next few weeks, a report from Lord (Sir Bernard) Hogan-Howe, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will land on the home secretary's desk containing recommendations for cutting the number of police forces in England and Wales.

Structural reform of the police is not high on the current list of voters’ concerns, but Lord Hogan-Howe’s document could well change that. After the crossbench peer names the constabularies which he believes should, in effect, be scrapped, as they are merged to create ‘regional’ forces, it is likely to ignite a huge rumpus that could jeopardise Shabana Mahmood’s ambitious plans to overhaul a policing model that was designed in the 1960s.  

Mahmood set out her intention to merge some force in January’s White Paper, and reiterated in a recent appearance at the Home Affairs Select Committee, that the case for police reform remained “as strong as it has ever been”. The centrepiece is the creation of a powerful new body, the National Police Service (NPS), which will bring together the College of Policing, the National Crime Agency and Counter-Terrorism Policing. Writing for the IfG in January, Cassia Rowland explained how the NPS could work, but she was not alone in warning about the risks, to accountability and responsiveness, of merging local forces – a contentious, and difficult, proposal.  

There are fears that bigger police forces will mean a drop in local responsiveness  

Scotland, where eight forces were combined into one in 2013, is used by those advocating mergers as an example of the financial benefits. It has saved £200 million a year and 2.5 million hours of police officer time through increased operational and technological efficiencies, according to the Scottish Police Authority. The trouble is that, south of the border, converting the concept of mergers into reality is fraught with difficulty, as Charles Clarke discovered 20 years ago.  

Clarke, who at the time was home secretary in Tony Blair’s administration, wanted to replace the 43-force set-up with 12 to 15 ‘mega-constabularies’, but the idea was ditched amid fierce opposition, particularly from some police authorities and chief constables whose powers would have been diluted.  

The main stumbling block in 2006 was the government’s refusal to provide sufficient funding to smooth out discrepancies in the amount individual forces earmarked for merger raised for policing from the council tax (the police precept). A similar problem is likely to arise this time even if Mahmood sticks to her promise to revamp the outdated police funding formula, the method used to calculate how much constabularies receive from the Home Office and therefore how much extra is required from the precept.

Sir Stephen Watson, the straight-talking Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, who was appointed by Andy Burnham when he was the region’s mayor, has said “a couple of billion quid” will be required to get mergers off the ground. A convincing business case will have to be made to the Treasury if it’s to stump up that kind of sum.

Under Mahmood’s plans, the newly-merged forces will sit above ‘local policing areas’ (LPAs), which will be broadly aligned with local authority boundaries. Neighbourhood officers in each LPA will target anti-social behaviour and crimes such as shoplifting, phone theft and burglaries. The home secretary has been talking up the role of LPAs, saying they will be the “bedrock” of policing, partly to counter fears that new, bigger forces will be remote from the needs of local communities, especially those in rural areas. That is where most of the criticism of the merger proposals is likely to be directed when Lord Hogan-Howe’s recommendations are published.

A big row over police force mergers is set to break out

Hogan-Howe’s report was meant to be completed by the end of summer, but Mahmood says it has been delayed so he can “re-test” the findings in light of the new prime minister’s devolution agenda. Burnham’s ‘Re-wiring the State’ document, issued in July, set out the government’s “ambition” to establish strategic authorities in every area of England by the end of 2028, with a strong steer towards mayors as the optimum model for local accountability – with the IfG previously arguing that police boundaries should be aligned to MSA (Mayoral Strategic Authority) boundaries to support integration of services and increase accountability.  

The Home Office desire, however, is to "significantly reduce” the number of police forces, and  two recent events have consolidated the merger case. In August, Cleveland Police sought the assistance of neighbouring forces as it dealt with the aftermath of a shocking collision on the A66 near Middlesbrough in which seven people died, including two police constables. More than 200 officers from six constabularies were drafted in, along with National Crime Agency personnel, as Cleveland mounted an extensive investigation into organised crime gangs that had gathered momentum following the crash. The support for Cleveland Police, which is one of the country’s smallest forces with 1,500 officers, arrived under existing ‘mutual aid’ arrangements, but a structure of larger forces should make the process of increasing resources and specialist capabilities in response to critical incidents and major crimes far more effective and dynamic.

Then, at the start of September, two police forces, Kent and Hampshire, were called upon to respond with barely any warning to anti-migrant protests on successive days, at the port of Dover and in Portsmouth. The intimidating scenes at Dover, in particular, where 150 demonstrators dressed in black and wearing face coverings blocked roads for around four hours, illustrated shortcomings in police intelligence, as well as the need for greater flexibility in resourcing.  

The structure of the police service was devised decades before the Internet, smartphones and social media made it easier to mobilise large numbers of people from different parts of the country. It has remained largely untouched even though criminals routinely travel across police force boundaries to commit offences while others operate in cyberspace. Those opposed to police force mergers should bear that in mind when Lord Hogan-Howe’s report detonates in Whitehall.