The way policing is organised in England and Wales is decades out of date and needs a major shake-up, the head of the Metropolitan Police has said.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the current system of 43 county forces hasn’t been fit for purpose “for at least two decades” and should be replaced by 12-15 mega forces.
Those larger forces would be better able to use modern technology and would reduce “expensive” governance and support functions, he said.
Sir Mark said the 43-force model “was designed in the 1960s and hasn’t been fit for purpose for at least two decades”.
“It hinders the effective confrontation of today’s threats and stops us fully reaping the benefits of technology,” he said.
“We need to reduce the number of forces by two-thirds, with the new bigger and fully capable regional forces supported by the best of modern technology and making better use of the limited funding available.”
Writing in The Sunday Times, he called his plans “the first serious reform of our policing model in over 60 years”.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to increase police funding by 2.3% above inflation each year in the recent spending review was “disappointing”, he added.
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Police forces have lost 3,300 officers and staff in recent years, which was “a big hit” from a total of more than 40,000, Mr Rowley told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
He said he was “determined to improve day-in and day-out experiences of Londoners on the streets. We can only do that if we focus ruthlessly on police work.
“When new recruits join they expect they’re going to spend most of their time protecting the public, enforcing the law, catching criminals. Within a couple of years 80% of them are saying ‘I spend most of my time safeguarding the vulnerable, that’s critical work, but that’s not the core work of policing’.
“So we need help to cut away some of these areas where other pressed public services have effectively pushed work to the police.”
He also called for football clubs, especially those in the Premier League, to pay more towards the cost of policing matches across the country, which, he said costs £70 million.
