ASPS President Rob Hay explains how the process of police reform in Scotland can help forces in England and Wales, which are due to undergo a similar process. He looks into the positives to aim for and the pitfalls to avoid.
As the Home Secretary unveils a raft of police reform measures in England and Wales (and some with UK national implications), colleagues in Scotland will observe some striking familiarities among the proposals. A reduction in the number of police forces, from 43 to 12, looks on the cards.
A reasonable question might be: to what extent have similar measures been successful in Scotland and what lessons can be learnt? How successful you think the amalgamation of the eight legacy forces, the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency and the Scottish Police Services Authority to form Police Scotland has been depends on what yardstick you choose to measure success with. Unfortunately, it often also depends on what party-political lens you happen to view it through, which speaks to one of the problems. As a case study in public sector reform it is fascinating; while having navigated the journey for much of my professional life I might choose other adjectives, here are some observations that could inform the journey colleagues south of the border seem set to embark on.
First the positives: since the inception of Police Scotland there has been a 100% solvency rate for murder in Scotland. In fact, you need to go back more than two decades to 2004 until you find an unsolved murder. That is an astonishing feat; one that is hard to find replicated elsewhere. There is no doubt all of Scotland has benefitted from equitable access to the skilled specialists who have achieved this. The strength of being able to access both specialist resources and muster strength in numbers has also been evident in the handling of major incidents and large-scale public events. Time and again, when placed on the world stage by events and associated scrutiny, Police Scotland has acquitted itself creditably and enhanced its reputation.
As is the case with so much in life: context matters. The decision to merge and create Police Scotland came at a time of unprecedented public sector austerity. The creation of Police Scotland protected overall police numbers at a time when forces in England and Wales saw officer numbers plummet by 20,000, roughly 15% of the overall officer workforce. Given the extent to which Home Office forces are still struggling with the consequences of that deficit today, some would argue that fact alone makes the case for Police Scotland and by extension, large scale mergers.
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing. The loss of local identity (and as a consequence, relationships) has, over time, moved policing in Scotland further from communities than it has ever been; testing claims of a distinctly Scottish model based on community policing.
The slightly helter-skelter approach to implementation (set a date two years in the future and charge at it with all your might), led to a situation whereby some of the fundamental building blocks of a single service were missing until years after the ‘go-live’ date. Disparate IT systems, a vast and crumbling estate, a lack of the administrative wiring needed to move people seamlessly round the organisational were all imported inefficiencies. Police Scotland didn’t even have a single national system to record crime until 10 years after implementation.
For staff and officers within the service, most will also recognise the near constant tension between the local and the national. The desire to centralise functions, oversight and decision-making, leading to a state of stifling bureaucratic impasse; versus a will to disaggregate, delegate and deliver a unique ‘local’ set of solutions, leading to a chaotic, patchwork quilt of service delivery. There is no settled state between these two extremes, more a constant balancing act, informed by the prevailing priorities of the day.
The creation of a single national service has also had a ‘fish-bowl’ effect. Every mistake, misstep or act of misconduct now weighs on the reputation of the entire service. Previously, senior officers in Aberdeen might tut at the antics of officers in Glasgow, and reassure themselves that this is a different force in a different part of the country. No such succour exists when you are all on the same team. In the same vein, the public reputation of the service becomes more fragile. What would have once been a series of unconnected ‘one-off’ failures in different organisations, in different parts of the country, can now be reasonably argued as indicative of systemic failure and a toxic organisational culture. Which is not to say that it isn’t precisely that – just that police leaders better make damn sure they are diagnosing and tackling the right problems.
The single service has also brought with it accusations of being too close to Government. While these conversations are often tainted with politics, I have heard well-meaning officers talk about “what the Minister wants” on more than one occasion. Independence from political influence, at the same time as being rigorously exposed to oversight, is a tenet that protects the democracy we live in.
Whether you think that Police Scotland has been partial to presentationism to spare governmental blushes is a matter of opinion – or maybe you think the arrests of two former First Ministers demonstrates the exact opposite bias. But having a single Chief Constable certainly creates a vulnerability and requires a certain strength of character from that Chief as a result. Perhaps this paradigm would be less apparent in regional forces, but it demonstrates the need for effective independent oversight and governance, from the outset and not as an after-thought.
My advice to policy-makers and leaders in England and Wales would be: understand why you are doing it. If it is just about the money, it isn’t worth it. Your workforce will see through it and you will haemorrhage your best people. It’ll also cost more than you think, and you should anticipate a need to invest early to get over the ‘hump’ of reform.
But, if you approach it from a perspective of improving service to the public, giving the public the essential services they need and want, there is a tantalising prize at stake. Most people will say you wouldn’t design a system of 43 different forces, all of varying sizes, if you started with a blank canvas.
This is a blank canvas moment. On the canvas needs to go the blueprint of what good looks like. Then you build the foundations. Only once the structure is watertight and secure, painted and decorated for human habitation, do you move the people in. It is likely to be a number of years before ‘the ribbon is cut’ on any of these regional forces, which offers the chance to ensure hard-learned lessons from Scotland are embedded in the process.