LG 3 - Cymdeithas Prif Swyddogion Heddlu Cymru (WACPO)
(Saesneg yn unig)
Dear Mrs Gregory,Proposed Local Government (Wales) Measure
I write as Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Wales (WACPO) in response to the Welsh Assembly Government’s consultation on the proposed Measure and the invitation in your letter of 17th October that we provide you with written evidence.
This letter sets out the written evidence we would like you to consider.
By way of background, I would refer you to our response dated 22nd November 2007 to the consultation document ‘Community Strategies Consultation Guidance – Local Vision’ and our response of 9th April 2008 to ‘Delivering a Shared Responsibility Performance Improvement and Community Planning’. For your ease I have appended both.
We are committed to working in partnership with the public, private and voluntary sectors and demonstrate this across Wales on a daily basis. We are equally committed to continuous improvement to provide our communities with the best service we possibly can. We therefore fully support the objective behind the proposed Measure of ensuring that local authorities and other public bodies in Wales work closely together to deliver coherent community strategies. We would add that this is an outcome that we have ourselves been looking for.
In light of the fact that we are already mandated under statute to work in partnership and have been since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 the key question for us is whether there is a need to place a statutory duty on the Chief Constables and Police Authorities in Wales in order to achieve the objectives behind the Measure. This is an aspect that our written evidence will now focus on.
Chief Constables are part of a carefully constructed tripartite constitutional arrangement created by Parliament through legislation such as the Police Act 1996; the Home Office and Police Authorities being the other two limbs. This structure operates in both Wales and England. The essential difference in Wales is that local and other public authority partners are devolved whilst policing is not. This means that whilst central direction in terms of national policing plans and strategies and the performance regime that underpins them comes from the Home Office, in order to be able to operate successfully so that our communities benefit from improved safety and security, we have committed ourselves to working as closely as we possibly can with the Welsh Assembly Government and our devolved partners. We consider that we have done so successfully and in the true spirit of devolution.
Policing in recent years has seen unprecedented change and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The UK Government’s Green Paper, ‘From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing our Communities Together’ is a good example of this. It sets out the broad vision of future policing and includes many proposals which are aimed at enhancing local service delivery through partnership and collaboration at a local level and better engagement with the public.
The Green Paper also acknowledges lessons from the past, particularly demands placed on the service which resulted in increased bureaucracy
including performance measurement regimes which had the effect of diverting resources in the direction of the measure rather than where they were most needed. In consequence, a stated aim of the Green Paper is to move to a system in which the police service is held to account much more at a local level with greatly reduced bureaucracy.
Many of these proposals are likely to be enshrined in Parliamentary legislation in due course and will place additional statutory obligations on the police service. I would add that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in its consultation response has highlighted its determination to meet a more citizen focused and local service and to build on our already extensive partnerships.
In our view the placing by the Assembly of a duty on Chief Constables to meet the proposed Measure is unnecessary and potentially carries a risk of creating tensions between the role of the Assembly, the Home Office and the UK Government. It is unnecessary because we support the aims of the Measure and, as indicated above, because we are already mandated to work in partnership under the Crime and Disorder Act. We are concerned about the Assembly seeking to legislate in this way because of the significant constitutional implications it has for policing in Wales at a time when there is substantial constitutional change in the offing via the current Green Paper referred to above.
There is also the potential for creating additional bureaucracy and duplication in that any duty placed on the police service in Wales that does not mirror existing or planned Home Office requirements will have the potential to divert our resources unless we are given the additional funding to meet them. The risk for us is that we could find ourselves having to meet and resource two sets of statutory obligations which are not complimentary but are both mandatory. Rather than an overall benefit, our communities could see policing resources diverted away from front line duties to service statutory obligations.
To avoid this, it is essential that the three elements of the tripartite structure, mentioned above, are involved in this consultation exercise. We are aware that the Police Authorities of Wales (PAW) is engaged but feel it equally important to engage with the Home Office. If this does not occur then a confused landscape of separate and potentially overlapping obligations will emerge.
Our position as Chief Constables is that we would support the aims of the Measure and would look to make it work but without the need to place a duty upon us to do so.
Thank you for this opportunity to provide your Committee with our written evidence.
Barbara Wilding
Chief Constable
Chair of WACPO
