By Agneta Cederstrom, Intern, Reform
The inevitable spending cuts facing the public services have caused a wide-ranging debate, from the timing of the cuts, to ring-fencing certain departments, to preserving the “frontline”. Speaking at a Reform lunch seminar yesterday on the topic of saving money in the police service, Julie Spence, Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, wondered what preserving the frontline really means. She questioned the arbitrary nature of applying the frontline boundary at uniformed police, emphasising that back-office operations are themselves necessary to deliver “frontline services”.
This said there are a lot of efficiency measures which can be made in regards to information technology, financing, and human resources. By looking at the end-to-end process, one could remove duplication in such areas as call-handling or helicopter use, and minimise time wasted by police officers at the courts waiting to be called as a witness. There is scope to improve and rationalise within and across different parts of the criminal justice system, based on collaboration and information sharing.
Because criminal activity occurs across different geographical areas and levels of severity, there is no universal solution. The police have applied a “laminate model” which is based upon a tiered approach to law enforcement. This suggests that certain decisions be taken at a national level, whilst others such as procurement of vehicles and uniforms are made locally. In practice, however (and as Reform’s research has shown), this balance is not always right, with duplication between forces and inefficiencies created by a lack of consistency across the country. It was agreed, for example, that it makes sense for IT systems to be developed at a national level rather than separately by each of the 43 forces.
Whilst these long-term goals are desirable, the near-term reality of cutting budgets by 10 or 15 per cent needed to be addressed. Since the overwhelming majority of money spent on policing is staffing costs (83 per cent in Julie Spence’s force), there is the inevitable choice of reducing pay or decreasing payrolls. There are several issues in the police’s terms and conditions of employment which need to tackled, such as overtime pay, the shift system, and civilian/officer ratios.
The rates on overtime pay can be simplified and the hours curtailed. There is also much which can be done with optimizing staff scheduling, by ensuring that more officers are operative during the times of greatest need. One retired Chief Constable said there is a recognised pattern that most calls are made between the hours of 4pm and 2am. The shift allowances will have to be negotiated amidst union resistance, with some form of compensation and flexibility. The variation of civilian/officer ratios across different constabularies (20/80 in some forces but as high as 50/50 in others) suggests that more policing functions could be performed by civilians.
What became obvious is that it is the people actually working in the sector who are the best qualified to identify and remove excesses and inefficiencies. As with schools, this would suggest that the right approach to trimming costs would be to cut a force’s budget and let the Chief Constable decide where the axe should fall.
