Responding to today’s publication of the Policing Green Paper, the New Local Government Network has welcomed measures to make police forces more accountable to local people, but urged the Home Secretary to ensure that local councillors maintain a key role in deciding local policing priorities.
The think tank said that plans to give directly elected mayors greater power over local police forces demonstrated that they can provide clear leadership and accountability. It warned however that plans for direct elections to police boards could lead to a blurring of accountability lines between councillors and directly elected ’Crime and Policing Representatives’ (CPRs). In June the NLGN and ippr warned that the current relatively small number of elected mayors might lead to Whitehall reluctance on policing devolution to councils.
NLGN would like to see council leaders who demonstrate clear leadership given more a powerful role in directing local policing. In 2007 NLGN published proposals to scrap police authorities and return their powers to elected council leaders, claiming that the changes would not only save millions of pounds which could be pumped into front line policing but also give local people greater influence over local policing.
Today the think tank is also publishing new measures to tackle gang activity, arguing that local areas affected by gang related crime should have a greater say over the deployment of neighbourhood policing.
Director of NLGN, Chris Leslie said:
“There is a danger in both Labour and Conservative proposals for separately elected police-only politicians at a time when we should be trying to join up the different branches of public policy instead of separating them into silos with conflicting mandates. It would be far better to rejuvenate local democracy as a whole by extending existing local elections to cover policing policy, rather than introducing disconnected elections split apart from wider community concerns. As yet there is no timescale, no clarity on how these separate elections or constituencies would be administered, nor any arrangements for determining the size or compositions of each new police authority. We hope that the Government will reflect on these matters and recognise the virtue of utilising existing elected posts rather than creating a wholly separate apparatus.
“While we welcome the Green Paper’s recognition that elected mayors have the clearest electoral mandate and should also fulfil the CPR function, we hope in time that the Government will allow other Council Leaders to undertake this role as well.”
