Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

A FORCE FIT FOR THE FUTURE
The PCC elections
and the future
Low turnout and public disenchantment with the
police and crime commissioner elections, as well
as delivering 20 per cent budget cuts, means
that the challenges are only just beginning for
the new incumbents. By Peter Neyroud
Peter Neyroud is former Chief
Constable of Thames Valley;
former CEO of the National
Policing Improvement Agency;
and Editor, Policing UK 2013
The last major act of policing 2012
was a key step for policing 2013:
the elections for the first police
and crime commissioners (PCCs) in 41
local police forces in England and Wales.
The first election was both more and
less predictable than expected. Turnout
was predictably atrocious. The candidates
who succeeded in getting elected were
much less predictably ‘independent’ –
12 of them out of 41, nine in forces
where normal patterns of voting would
have delivered a Conservative and two
in potentially Labour areas. Overall, the
final 41 were 16 Conservative, 13 Labour
and 12 independent.
The newly elected candidates took up
office on 22 November and have threeand-a-half
years to make an impact before
the second round of elections in May
2016. With their in-trays bulging with
challenges, it is an important moment to
reflect on some of the issues that have
already emerged from the election.
The government stated that the
principle reason for the change to PCCs
was to give direct democratic control
over the police, as a central plank of
their reform programme. Democracy
rather than managerialism was to be
the principle driver of improvement.
The Conservative part of the coalition
made great play of the invisibility of
Police Authorities as a rationale for their
demise. A national turnout of 15 per cent
– the worst ever in any national election
in the UK – suggested that the new PCC
model had yet to achieve much visibility.
Worryingly, compared with similar,
supplementary vote elections for the
Mayor in London, a considerable
number of the voters who did bother
to turn out decided to spoil their ballot
papers, indicating a significant level of
disenchantment with the whole idea.
Ministers suggested that, as this was
a new post and a first election, it was to
be expected that the public might take
another election for the idea to catch on.
It will be easier, it was suggested, for the
public to get excited, when the first PCCs
are standing for re-election with a real
record of achievement to show.
The argument that ‘next time will
be better’ may well have some merit,
because there were certainly one-off
factors in this election that contributed to
a very low turnout. The decision to hold
it in mid-November, the failure to fund
the distribution of election addresses
from the candidates and a surprising
reluctance from the government to get
out and promote it until the last minute
all played their part.
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