ELECTED POLICE commissioners with the power to sack chief constables are to be put in place in the United Kingdom under the biggest shake-up of policing for 50 years, though critics warned it will give individuals too much influence over policing.
Under the plan announced by home secretary Theresa May in the House of Commons yesterday, commissioners will be elected in May 2012, replacing policing authorities, with the power to set local policing priorities and budgets and publish a police and crime plan.
However, the Home Office acknowledged that the 41 new commissioners, who will be paid £122,000 a year, and perhaps more in the major cities, could cost £130 million to elect and support in their first year.
Once they are elected, the home secretary will not have powers to fire either the commissioners or chief constables.
“It’s a new era and that’s important to recognise. Crucially, what is going to be happening is that the police and crime commissioner will be the elected official who has a mandate from the people in relation to that police force. The accountability will be directly to that police and crime commissioner,” Ms May said.
Each commissioner will be allowed to serve for two four-year terms only. Judges, serving military, civil servants and people convicted of a crime within the previous five years and sentenced to a jail term of three months or longer will be barred from seeking election, along with local authority staff, MPs, MEPs and all members of devolved parliaments. Serving police will also not be allowed to stand.
Candidates for election will have to be citizens of the UK, the Commonwealth, Irish Republic or European Union.
The police minister, Nick Herbert, said the new commissioners would “replace weak and invisible police authorities” and give the public a “greater say over how their community is policed, making forces truly accountable to the communities they serve, and ensuring that the police are crime-fighters and not form writers”.
However, Rob Garnham, Conservative chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, was not alone in being sceptical about the plan last night, saying that “there is a real risk of politicisation”.
Existing police authorities have done their task efficiently and effectively for years. Complaining that too much change is happening too fast, Mr Garnham said: “The perfect storm is just about to brew ... the Olympics coming, changing of policing governance, changes to officer pay and conditions – all these things are coming together. We’re concerned about the timing and about the cost.” Warning of the politicisation of the police, Labour shadow home secretary Ed Balls said: “At its heart this goes against a 150-year tradition of keeping politics out of policing. It raises the very real prospect of a politician telling a chief constable how to do their job.”
