Police reform cannot just redraw the map

Sir Mark Rowley’s recent warning that policing cannot continue as it is raises an important question. Not just about how many forces we should have, but about what needs to change for a different model to work in practice.

His proposed direction is significant: a National Police Service, eight to ten regional forces and hundreds of local policing commands. The intention is to retain strong local policing while giving officers access to specialist capabilities, better technology and the capacity to respond to threats that increasingly cross geographical boundaries.

Whether that precise model becomes reality remains to be seen. But, alongside the debate about structures, there is also a practical question about the systems and processes needed to support them.

What needs to change now to make reform work?

From an organisational transformation perspective, it is useful to distinguish between structural reform and the changes needed to make it work in practice.

You can change force boundaries without integrating data, combine organisations without simplifying their processes, and create shared services that inherit all the complexity of those they replace. A new structure will achieve very little if the systems and processes supporting it cannot work across organisational boundaries; this highlights why systems and processes also deserve attention as reform takes shape.

The technology problem is already here

The figures Sir Mark set out help explain why this cannot wait: £2 billion a year spent on technology, of which 97 per cent goes towards maintaining legacy systems. It would be easy to see this as an IT problem but, in reality, it reaches much further into how a force operates.

It affects whether information can be shared, whether leaders have a reliable view of their workforce and finances, and how much time staff spend working around systems rather than doing the job those systems are supposed to support. Those are organisational issues, with consequences for frontline policing.

With support functions accounting for anywhere between 9 per cent and 15 per cent of each region’s workforce, Sir Mark asserts that unnecessary duplication consumes resources that could otherwise support local policing.

Finance, HR, payroll, procurement and workforce services may not be the most visible part of policing, but they matter enormously. They determine how people are recruited, paid and deployed, how money is controlled and whether leaders have the information they need to make decisions.

Alongside the question of how many forces are needed, there may be value in asking: how many different ways of delivering the same supporting processes do we actually need?

Standardise what does not need to be different

Local circumstances will remain an important consideration for policing leaders. Alongside those operational needs, there may be opportunities to simplify supporting processes without compromising local accountability.

If ten organisations carry out materially the same finance, procurement or HR process in ten different ways, it is worth understanding why. Some differences may be necessary. Others may simply have developed over time, making systems harder to integrate, information harder to compare and shared services harder to establish.

This is where standardisation becomes useful, provided we are clear about what we are trying to achieve. The aim is not to make everything identical or remove legitimate operational differences. It is to distinguish between variation that supports policing and variation that adds work without improving the result.

A useful starting point may be to identify what organisations have in common, understand where a different approach is needed, and consider whether existing complexity still serves a purpose.

Interoperability must come before consolidation

Whatever structure emerges, information will need to move more easily between organisations. That makes interoperability something to plan for now, rather than a problem to address once the new arrangements are in place.

This is already part of the wider policing conversation: the 2026 Cityforum Digital Policing programme, for example, described the need for a digital backbone that makes data and services available wherever and whenever they are needed.

The same thinking needs to extend to the corporate information that supports day-to-day decisions. Any new model will need reliable workforce information, comparable financial data, consistent organisational structures and a clear view of expenditure and resources. Without that, bringing organisations together risks making decision-making more difficult rather than less.

That does not mean replacing every existing system immediately. It means asking whether the decisions being made today will make it easier to share information and services tomorrow.

Can data be compared and combined? Could a service move between organisations without having to be rebuilt? Will an investment make a future change easier, or create another dependency that has to be unpicked?

Those are practical questions forces can ask now, even while the final structure remains uncertain.

Waiting for certainty carries its own risk

It is understandable that police leaders may be cautious about committing to major decisions before the requirements of reform are clearer, particularly where investments may need to be revisited.

But waiting is not a neutral choice either. Legacy platforms still need maintaining, staff still have to work around inefficient processes, and finance, HR, payroll and procurement still have to operate every day. The uncertainty about future structures does not remove those pressures.

Equally, investing heavily in customised systems designed around today’s organisational boundaries could create problems if those boundaries change. The answer is not to ignore either risk, but to make decisions that improve the organisation now without making it harder to adapt later.

There is useful work forces can do now: simplify processes that have become unnecessarily complicated, improve data quality and make sure responsibility for that data is clear. They can also review customisation that no longer serves a meaningful operational purpose, strengthen integration capability and assess which services could work across organisational boundaries.

These are not decisions that require a final map of policing. It is possible to reduce complexity and improve adaptability without assuming today’s structures will remain in place indefinitely.

Reform should be measured by what improves

A new organisation can still inherit the complexity of all the organisations that came before it, and the same applies to support services. Reducing duplication only releases capacity for frontline policing if the processes, technology and operating model can absorb the work. Otherwise, the administration has not disappeared, it has simply become somebody else’s responsibility.

The eventual number of forces will be an important decision for those responsible for policing. From a transformation perspective, it may be equally useful to consider what the changes enable, rather than focusing on organisational numbers or the amount of technology implemented.

The more useful question is what has improved as a result? Do officers have more time for work that requires police skills? Can information follow victims, offenders and investigations across organisational boundaries? Do leaders have a reliable view of their workforce, finances and operations?

Can common services be delivered once rather than repeatedly recreated, and can useful innovation reach forces more quickly? Most importantly, can the public see a tangible improvement in the service they receive?

From a transformation perspective, it helps to start with the problem an organisation is trying to solve. Technology is an important enabler, but simplifying a process or making information more reliable can be just as valuable. The benefit lies in what improves, rather than in the implementation alone.

Sir Mark argues that policing has reached another defining moment because society, threats and technology have changed faster than the institutions designed to respond to them. His assessment provides an important context for considering how organisational transformation could support reform.

Alongside decisions about structures, there is an opportunity to consider the practical changes that could help any future model work effectively.

We do not yet know exactly what the final structure will look like. That uncertainty is real, but it should not prevent forces from implementing practical changes that support people in their roles today, while helping policing prepare for whatever comes next.

Helen Crisostomo is Chief Commercial Officer at de Novo Solutions.