Officer redundancy may have to be ‘reconsidered’ says chief

A chief constable has called for national planning to protect potentially unviable forces and redundancy for police officers to be reconsidered.

Speaking to the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales annual conference on Monday (September 7) in a session Projecting the Future of Policing, Nottinghamshire Police Chief Constable Chris Eyre said historical reasons mean forces are in different financial positions but all forces have a duty to protect citizens everywhere.

He called on fellow chief officers to lead the radical reshaping of the service that is needed and to ensure everyone receives a consistent level of service wherever they live.

Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary Zoë Billingham told delegates there is a danger of a two-tier service if a national plan is not agreed quickly.

She said the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) had impacted on forces to a different extent, with some seeing a reduction in expenditure of just ten per cent while others faced 28 per cent cuts.

“The same scale of savings in the next CSR as the last one, continuing to reduce costs in the same way as the last four years, is not possible; it would place the viability of some forces in jeopardy in three to five years as they are already making huge cuts in neighbourhood policing,” she added.

Mr Eyre said collective action is now required as it would be untenable to stand by as one force becomes unviable.

He added that it will be impossible to provide a gold standard service in every aspect of policing when each force is impacted differently by cuts.

“Does that mean we have to accept and acknowledge that with the different resourcing levels people start from we end up with different levels of service in different locations? Or do we have to have a conversation around the quality of service and how we deliver it to make sure the public receive a consistent level of service in different areas and different aspects of what we do across the country and communities?” he said.

“I don’t think it is a consistent or effective position for us to take where we say ‘provided it is okay in my space, if communities over here don’t get effective services in the future it is not down to me’. Our role is to design a service for the future where all communities are safe.”

Ms Billingham said the National Police Chiefs’ Council should lead the plan and not other national agencies, but this needs to be done rapidly. She warned it must not get stuck in a policy void in the run-up to police and crime commissioner elections in 2016.

Mr Eyre also caused considerable controversy by suggesting that officer posts should not be protected over police staff as further cuts impact over the next few years. He said it is time to reconsider changing the law to allow chief officers to make police officers redundant.

“I don’t think we can afford to be in a position where we say we are going to make all police staff redundant because that is how I am going to balance my budget and protect police officers, potentially taking away really effective police staff to be replaced by officers who are paid more and have to be trained to deliver it, and not be as effective as their police staff colleagues. That kind of apartheid situation has been in policing for too long and is simply unsustainable,” he said.

“It means we have to be prepared to challenge ourselves. I personally think if we are to reduce headcount, it must be in a way we get the right shape of service for the future, not just protecting the number of police officers we employ. That probably means the issue of redundancy for police officers.”