Will restructuring improve local policing?

EMPAC Research Fellow, Steve Dodd, assesses the current UK Government plans for a National Police Service with a whopping overall annual budget of £20,965,700,000. The starting point might be to consider what problem are the Government seeking to solve? The National Audit Office (November 2025) insights about police productivity concluded:

-there was unnecessary recording and time wasted on form filling 

· police forces are managing increasing financial pressures but, to-date, the Home Office has not fully understood the implications.

· the Home Office is strengthening its oversight of police forces but there are important gaps in its understanding.

· fully funding the government’s policing commitments while managing existing pressures will require police forces to make significant savings

So, to what extent is police ‘reform’ as being espoused going to improve any of that bleak picture?

Bigger is better?

The Government has indicated the adoption of a federal policing style, meaning County Forces are to be amalgamated to provide more efficient levels of service, improve cost effectiveness, reinforce governance and distribute accountability. For illustrative example, the East Midlands is used as a case study (comprising Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire). The East Midlands Police (as per current boundaries) are covers a geographical area of 6,000sq miles, containing a population of 5,000,000 citizens.

The region has current officer populations of Derbyshire (2,102), Leicestershire (2,248), Lincolnshire (1,173), Northamptonshire (1,465), Nottinghamshire (2,391). These forces manage 390,000 crimes annually, comprising Derbyshire (84,038), Leicestershire (94,194), Lincolnshire (54,438), Northamptonshire (59,310) and Nottinghamshire (99,719).

Whether lumping all these into one pot of just under 10,000 cops somewhere will reduce form filling is yet to be seen. As the Home Office can’t understand local policing it seems they have to alter it to fit their Whitewall ways. Given the track record of mega projects like HS2 should we have any confidence that after millions are spent the local taxpayer will feel better off? 

Table of comparison

The paradox of local to national

The central paradox of the Government’s (two term) plans are in their contention to improve effective local control in tandem with transferred central oversight. Yet one wonders if one can have one’s cake, and eat it? The Safer Streets mission and the Neighbourhood Policing pledge are all about localism. These are about better understanding local community priorities and perceptions, although many local police stations have been shut in favour of larger centralised HQs. This is akin to shutting corner shops and building a mall.

The procurement plan is all about national IT and there are national targets around knife crime and VAWG (as well the standardised national level criminal offences: terrorism, domestic extremism, serious & organised crime, cyber-crime and firearms). This means policing, as a federal service, is an arm of the Home Office (in its London-centric base).

Centralising and controlling 

A two term White Paper risks becoming a white elephant because based on current polling, Labour will not be re-elected in the next General Election, and that election might be soon. The risks of distraction through re-organising are costly and may not deliver service user improvements fast enough to voter win confidence. Indeed, despite much rhetoric about devolvement by the Labour Government, what a local person in the East Midlands is likely to see is the disappearance of their local force and even county HQ, whilst their precept goes up. 

To what extent the local policing model can preserve the relationship with the local public is tenuous because, in the main, there isn’t one: with Bobbies on the Beat confined now to mythology. That pattern of the police further retreating from the streets, and presumably all gathering in a mega Whitehall somewhere down south is a dubious vote winner. The alternative for the voter, that a new App will be available, reflects the technocratic and out of touch Whitehall mandarin view that policing is somehow about franchise warehousing. 

Boots on the ground and the voter

Whitehall may feel better about centralisation, with Blairite metrics to come, but for local people in local communities in the East Midlands they may just feel the State is taking more in tax yet giving less back, particularly north of London. Whilst the Government may tell the public they are getting more, much will be hidden and even less visible than before. Consequently, the flow of intelligence will not improve and may even deteriorate even more. Replacing community intelligence with enhanced IT surveillance will not work.

In Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire (which has the largest force and budget in the region), just last week, outside a large Asda supermarket, a pitched gang fight with weapons resulted in two being injured. Combatants wore masks (so CCTV is of no use) and the police appealed for information. There used to be a police station just around the corner from where officers walked a beat, but that has been closed down and ‘centralised’. 

Whilst this is a policing matter, it is a political question. The notion that a voter is motivated by the big State or their everyday life is the key differential. If people cannot see or feel the difference locally, there will be no increased confidence in policing, and no vote at the General Election. Given the whole system is funded by taxpayers, is there any political mandate for the current expensive restructuring plans when all the local public in the East Midlands, and everywhere else, want is some good local policing boots on the ground?