Taking Risks - Cuts Have Consequences
In previous blogs I have tried to raise the profile of some of the consequences of the reduction to the police budget that we have already seen in Wiltshire. In this blog I will set out my vision of what the future may look like and will highlight the views of other influential people. I would be naive to think that this blog will have any impact on reversing the cuts to our policing service. What I can hope is that it feeds the debate that needs to be had about what it is the public expectations of the police are and to ensure those expectations are realistic. A decision has been made, by a new and democratically elected government, to substantially cut public spending even further. This will have an impact on policing both directly and indirectly. The Police Federation have warned for some time that the cuts we have already faced, along with those we knew would come, would inextricably change the relationship, we the police, have with the public. We are now, at last, hearing Chief Officers and Police and Crime Commissioners warning of the same things. Cuts have consequences and those consequences ultimately impact on the level and quality of service we, the police, provide for this country. We cannot keep doing more with less, technology can only deliver so much efficiency (as well as creating its own demand!). Collaborations, alliances and economies of scale can deliver savings in the long term but the costs and bureaucracy that surround such projects often draw staff away from their primary role purely to help deliver savings. There is a growing voice that says that the current model of 43 police forces (with 43 Chief Constables and 43 PCC’s) in England and Wales is inefficient. The Police Federation are part of this voice but I have a dilemma. Wiltshire Police are one of the smallest police forces in the country, we have one of the lowest crime levels, over the last few years HMIC (Her Majesties Inspector of Constabulary) have consistently graded Wiltshire as good and Wiltshire is one of the most cost effective police forces in the country. Despite all of this we are putting that level of service and efficiency at risk in the name of saving money. We may be forced into merging with less efficient police forces and other public sector organisations. The fact is our Chief Constable has little choice if he is to deliver the £10 Million in savings he is being asked to deliver. If the current comprehensive spending review seeks a larger saving, which many think it may, it is likely that Wiltshire Police will no longer be viable. Wiltshire has already lost 153 police officers in the last five years. So from which areas have these officers been lost? 25 officers have been lost from our Road Policing Unit. This is a reduction of 50% and yet we are being expected to deal with increasingly busier roads. There are new laws, such as the ban on smoking in cars if children are present, who is supposed to enforce that law? We have lost 35 police officers from our learning and development and professional development teams. When we need to cut further we can’t take any more out of these teams. Our Intelligence capability has been reduced by 16 officers. This is a reduction of more than 50%. Local proactive crime teams who would focus on prolific offenders have been cut by 28 officers, again a reduction of half. Our ability to police proactively has been reduced. Where will further cuts fall? At the moment our reactive capability and Neighbourhood Teams have been protected from these cuts but with a possibility of having to cut another 300 members of staff, to meet £10M in savings, continued protection of the frontline will prove impossible. Unfortunately it will prove even more challenging to reduce the workload. It simply is not possible to keep expecting officers to deal with ever increasing workloads. The reason we are one of the most efficient forces in the country is that we had reduced police officer numbers prior to 2010. Ten years ago Wiltshire Police had 1290 police officers. Officially we now have just over 1000. We have stripped out a lot of our inefficiencies. The ones that remain are mostly bureaucratic processes which we have built into policing over the years to try to eradicate risk and to improve visibility and engagement with our communities. We have no option now but to reduce bureaucracy and carry greater risk. We now have to reduce our visibility and engagement which we introduced to increase public confidence and re-assure the public, removing these activities risks reducing public confidence in the police. Our own Chief Constable has said that we have to do things differently. Doing things differently includes stopping doing some things that the public had got used to us doing. We haven’t been doing those things in the past because we thought it was nice, we have done them to reduce the risk of harm to individuals and the wider community and we have done them to improve our contact with the public to help them shape what local policing priorities should be. The challenges the police face cannot be met just through becoming more efficient. You will no doubt have heard that crime is falling. In Wiltshire it is not. Crime levels have been fairly stable over the last four years (source www.ukcrimestats.com ). Crime is not falling it is changing. Certain types of crime have reduced (Burglary, Robbery, Theft of and from vehicles have dropped 68% in the last four years). Other crimes have increased. Violent crime in Wiltshire has increased 73% in that same period. So with less police officers and less police staff we are having to deal with significant increases in those types of crime that are more complex and require more time and resources to deal with. On top of this we are filling in the gaps left by cuts to other public sector services. Even more worrying is the rise in cyber-crime which does not show up on these crime states. Only about 20% of what the police do is what we, the police, would traditionally consider as crime and is reflected in crime statistics. Dealing with missing people, welfare concerns, anti-social behaviour and people with mental health problems fill up a lot of the rest. It’s easy to say we will need to do things differently but what does this actually mean. What are those things that we need to do differently and what help do we need from the public. Officers at the front line of policing are already doing this. They are cutting corners in our own processes. They are doing this not because they are unprofessional or lazy but because they need to to allow them to do the things that are most important. This exposes them to personal liability if something goes wrong. We have unfortunately experienced the effects of this with officers having to bear the brunt of disproportionate investigations from both the Independent Police Complaints Commission as well as out own Professional Standards Department. Such investigations increase stresses on officers and can lead to restrictions being placed on the role that officer can deliver. This could lead to a vicious circle with more complaints leading to more officers being restricted and increasing pressures on those left who may need to make their own shortcuts to manage the increased workload. We desperately need more risk to be carried by the organisation rather than the individual police officers. This is vital to create an environment where police officers can get on with their jobs and make difficult decisions without the constant fear of complaints. So in plain language what am I saying? Demand on the police has not reduced yet we have fewer officers to do that work. The public are going to have to accept us not doing things we used to do. The public are going to have to accept that we will take longer to do things and the public are going to be forced to accept that sometimes we won’t be able to help them because we have had to decide that somebody else’s problem was more important. Sometimes things will go wrong and the public, the media and those bodies who hold us to account are going to have to be less judgemental and more supportive. If this does not happen a wedge will be driven between policing and the public and this is not healthy. Trust in the police is at its highest level since surveys began in the 1980. We are proud of this and proud of the unique way in which we police this country and the esteem in which we are held by the vast majority of the public. This can only continue to flourish in an environment that allows it to continue.
