Police mergers will be a distraction from the fight against crime

In response to the government’s White Paper on policing reform, Jonathan Ash-Edwards has cautioned against spending time and money on a costly restructure, instead of focusing more resource on fighting crime.

Jonathan Ash-Edwards, Police & Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire said,

“While some of the Home Secretary’s proposals are sensible, scrapping county police forces in favour of distant regional forces is not. It won’t fix the daily problems police officers face. Nor will it serve the public who are rightly sceptical of what they are hearing.

“In my recent survey of Hertfordshire residents, just 11% thought mergers would make policing better.

“When local people are asking for more police on their local streets, who know and understand the local neighbourhoods, this White Paper delivers the opposite.

“Bigger does not mean better. Huge regional police forces will be slower to respond, less interested in local priorities, harder to hold to account and more likely to divert resources away from neighbourhood policing.

“Our policing model is not perfect, which public service is? But it is fundamentally wedded to the communities that it serves. Local, accountable policing matters. Regional forces will see resources pulled into cities and big urban centres, leaving towns and rural areas with scraps.

“Time and time again, taxpayers see that top-down public sector reorganisations and mergers are expensive, distracting and rarely deliver the savings and benefits promised. Rightly so, residents in Hertfordshire expect that money to be spent on solving more crime and making our communities safer.

“That was the wrong choice. Instead of wasting money on reorganisations, let’s untie the police’s hands, put the resources in and launch a relentless crackdown on crime. That would be a reform we could all get behind.”

For more information please contact:

Rachel Stone, Hertfordshire PCC

Tel: 0794 9279782 Email: [email protected]

Please visit our website at: www.hertscommissioner.org