Downing Street has rejected a call by Britain’s most senior police officer for further mergers of forces following warnings that swingeing cuts could compromise public safety.
Writing in the Guardian, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, called for the culling of more than 30 forces in England and Wales to create nine super-forces based on regional boundaries. He said large cuts to police and other services would endanger the public unless the next government pushed through radical structural reforms to cut back-office costs.
But the prime minister’s spokesman said the current structure of police forces was the right approach as it retained local accountability.
“It is important and there is an issue here about making greater efficiencies and greater co-operation between forces, but the prime minister’s view hasn’t changed. He does believe that the structure of police forces – the current one we have – is the right approach given the importance of retaining local accountability,” the spokesman said.
“So his view would be that – as we already have seen a number of forces working together, sharing technology and procurement decisions and the like – there is more that can be done, as the Metropolitan police commissioner says in his article today. But in terms of going a step further and the merger of police forces, the PM’s views haven’t changed.”
Hogan-Howe said he expected further reductions in budgets regardless of the outcome of next year’s general election. “There’s a bigger risk to public safety if we don’t take radical action,” Hogan-Howe wrote. “We’ve saved hundreds of millions already, but from 2016 onwards it will be much harder.”
He said criminals were moving from the “shotgun” robberies of the past to more sophisticated offences involving data and cybercrime, and that police needed to catch up.
There is concern among the leadership of the Yard and London government about the level of cuts proposed, which could result in the capital losing a third of its budget.
Police chiefs across the country fear that the scale of the cuts to come could decimate neighbourhood policing, vital to preventing crime. Privately they fear a potential return to 1980s-style policing, responding to emergencies and little else.
The home secretary, Theresa May, is due to go before MPs on the home affairs committee on Monday, and on Wednesday the Home Office will tell forces about more cuts. Police fear they will eventually be bigger than the 23% reduction since 2010.
In his article Hogan-Howe wrote that others involved in keeping the public safe were also facing large cuts. “Our partners face their own cost pressures, and the big concern is that if we don’t work together, with a shared view of the risks, public safety will suffer.”
