In last Friday’s early evening rush hour, three police vehicles had parked by the side of the North Circular Road in west London to deal with an incident involving a car and a van. A woman was sitting on a foldaway camping chair, looking shocked. Beside her was a young, uniformed officer, diligently writing an account of what had happened in her notebook.
As I drove past, I thought how, over the next few hours, those notes would have to be typed up onto a computer, along with any other crucial details she had jotted down by hand, while all the key information would also need to be transferred into multiple different databases. How much of the officer’s time would that take up back at the police station when she could be on the beat or responding to other emergencies?
The police service cannot rely solely on the Chancellor’s generosity
This quaint, but frankly outdated, way of note-taking, when there are so many more seamless, digital options possible, highlights the inefficiencies that continue to bedevil policing in Britain. It’s one of the reasons why Peter Kyle, the punchy Science and Technology Secretary, hit back in a BBC interview at the weekend when questioned as to whether there’d be enough money for forces in England and Wales in the forthcoming Spending Review. The police need to ‘do their bit’, he said:
Money is part of how we change our country for the better. And reform – modernisation, using technology, doing things in the way that people would expect our public services to be doing in the 2020s – is the other part.
Kyle is right. For decades, policing has been slow to engage with new technology and resistant to the organisational changes necessary that would make it a more effective and productive public service. The policing watchdog, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, led by Sir Andy Cooke, has witnessed the wastefulness close up, during its visits to local forces.
‘Time and again, we see inefficiencies stemming from the police’s reliance on outdated IT,’ Sir Andy wrote in his first annual report in 2023, adding that even where kit was available, it wasn’t used. ‘Despite having mobile devices that allow them to complete reports remotely, many officers still frequently return to stations to complete these reports,’ he said.
At the root of the problem is the way the service is structured. There are 43 constabularies across England and Wales, ranging in size from the City of London Police, with fewer than 1,000 officers, to the Metropolitan force, with 33,000 – each with its own senior leadership team, civilian support setup and back-office functions, such as payroll, legal affairs and human resources. If you were designing a police service today, for the 21st century, you would never do it this way. Inefficiency is baked into the system.
Procurement is arguably the area where the 43-force model has provided a platform for the most profligate spending, with constabularies frequently negotiating deals individually. Figures obtained by Labour last year, under Freedom of Information laws, showed how costs varied. Leicestershire Police bought batons for £20 each; the Northamptonshire force paid £120. The price for a motorcycle helmet ranged from £467 in Derbyshire to £628 in Staffordshire, while Merseyside Police paid twice as much for a high-performance car than neighbouring Lancashire (£55,000 compared to £27,000).
Although a number of forces do work together, sharing specialist resources and expertise – for example in firearms, organised crime and roads policing – attempts to achieve the economies of scale seen, for example, in Scotland, where eight forces were merged into one in 2013, saving an estimated £2.2 billion over 13 years, have failed. In 2006, the Labour government proposed cutting the number of forces from 43 to 24 but its approach was heavy-handed, lacked political support locally and had to be abandoned – at considerable cost. Six years later, the introduction of police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in each force area under the Conservative-led coalition cemented the 43-force model. This set back prospects for developing a more cohesive and less fragmented system of policing for more than a decade.
In 2022, a report from the independent think tank, the Police Foundation, estimated that forces in England and Wales could save ‘hundreds of millions’ of pounds annually by combining administrative and business support teams and purchasing equipment, vehicles, forensic services and computers centrally. Some savings have been achieved since then, through the publically-funded company Blue Light Commercial, but progress has been painfully slow. Particularly in IT, forces continue to pursue their own individual approaches, negotiating separate contracts with software suppliers and increasing costs through overlap and duplication.
The author of the Police Foundation report, its former director Rick Muir, is now working as a policing advisor at the Home Office, where he is tasked with developing plans for police reform. These will be included in a white paper in the coming months. The measures will revolve around the establishment of a new National Centre of Policing, responsible for forensics, IT and aviation, with greater powers over procurement. The country’s policing leaders, including the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, support the case for restructuring and have been working with the Home Office on the plans. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Ministers must not duck the opportunity for radical change.
In the meantime, the police service can do much more itself. In 2023, a productivity review led by two former chief constables identified 26 ways to free up a staggering 38 million hours of police time, equating to 21,000 police officers. The recommendations included cutting red tape, reducing sickness absence and using computer technology for clerical tasks. A second report from the productivity panel in 2024 said a further 23 million hours could be saved through the expansion of AI, more efficient processing of suspects in custody and prevention work to reduce the time spent by officers investigating missing people. A third report, focusing on neighbourhood policing, has also been completed.
Although a number of the productivity panel’s recommendations have been implemented, there is a risk that unless police leaders and the Home Office drive the changes through, momentum will be lost, and another opportunity to make efficiencies missed.
Police force budgets are clearly stretched, with officers and staff working under huge pressure, often at great personal cost. Without a significant funding uplift, there is a real risk that Home Office targets on knife crime, violence against women and girls, and neighbourhood policing won’t be met, as Rowley and other chiefs fear. But the service cannot rely solely on the Chancellor’s generosity. Chiefs and PCCs must embrace organisational change and technological advances. There is no time anymore for their personal fiefdoms and pet projects. They must work together, moving from the age of the notebook to the keyboard, to help achieve the efficiencies that are undoubtedly possible.
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