Police and crime commissioners in England and Wales will be scrapped by the Government, it has been announced.The elected officials were first introduced in 2012 and their responsibilities include setting budgets for their police forces and appointing the most senior officer – the chief constable – for their area.
00:00The model was created to increase accountability and build a greater connection between policing and local communities by having a single public official directly elected by the public, responsible for holding their chief constable to account, setting the local police budget and agreeing strategic priorities for their force through their local police and crime plan.
00:20However, whilst the role of PCCs has evolved over time to include responsibility for commissioning services for victims, driving local partnerships and in some areas responsibilities for fire governance, the model has failed to live up to expectations.
00:36It has not delivered what it was set up to achieve.
00:39The reality is that the PCC model has weakened local police accountability and has had perverse impacts on the recruitment of chief constables.
00:47They have failed to inspire confidence in local people in stark contrast to the mayoral model, which has clearly been ultimately more successful.
00:55We will no longer run separate policing elections and we will also abolish police and crime panels, the current structure that performs scrutiny panels for PCCs.
01:05We estimate that at least £100 million will be saved this Parliament by moving to these new arrangements.
01:11Once delivered, the changes are expected to achieve savings to the Home Office of around £20 million a year, enough to fund around 320 extra police constables.
01:23Further detail will be set out in the forthcoming White Paper and we will bring forward the necessary legislation as part of our broader police reform proposals as soon as parliamentary time allows.
01:33There are no plans to create mayors in Wales.
01:37We wish to harmonise arrangements across England and Wales as far as possible and will therefore work with the Welsh Government to ensure new arrangements to replace PCCs provide strong and effective police governance for Wales, recognising the unique nature of Welsh arrangements.
01:53I also want to clarify that these reforms will not affect governance arrangements for the City of London Police, which is governed by the City Corporation.
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