The landscape of British policing is on the cusp of a seismic shift. With the government’s recent signals toward merging the 43 forces of England and Wales into a streamlined 12 to 18 regional 'mega-forces', and the concurrent announcement to disband police and crime commissioners (PCCs), the very architecture of accountability is being dismantled. As the government seeks efficiency and operational scale, it risks leaving behind the most vital component of policing by consent: independent community scrutiny. When done well this is at the cornerstone of building trust and confidence. It is critical for officers of every rank level.
Currently, police oversight is an inconsistent patchwork. Across the country, a mix of Independent Advisory Groups (IAGs), monitoring groups, and scrutiny panels operate with varying degrees of autonomy. Some are robust, supported by outgoing PCCs; others are managed by police forces themselves, creating an inherent conflict of interest. If they don’t like the advice or even didn’t like the person giving the advice they either get rid of them or refuse to listen and there is no accountability. Their effectiveness and impact vary so greatly that a citizen’s ability to hold the police to account has always been a 'postcode lottery'.
As a result of the McPherson report Independent Advisory groups were introduced as a concept. As a result of the Best Use of Stop and Search scheme in 2014 community scrutiny panels were introduced. This policies didn’t always play out in practice. Large parts of the country went without any scrutiny and oversight, some areas of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people had less than half a dozen people speaking to the police on their behalf. In 2023 the government consulted and pulled together a scrutiny framework to share best practice ideas and launched this as a voluntary consultation document.
If the government is to succeed in its new plans for the regional restructuring of police forces, it must carry communities – as well as the police along with it, this includes moving beyond the voluntary Community Scrutiny Framework of 2023. I suggest what is needed is a mandatory, three-tiered National Scrutiny Framework that ensures accountability is as scalable as the new regional forces themselves.
The fragmented present
While the 2023 framework provided a blueprint for reviewing the use of powers like stop and search, adoption of this is patchy with few parts of the country being able to evidence how effective and complaint they are, the implementation remains uneven. In some areas, panels are 'critical friends' that drive real change in officer behaviour; in others, they are sidelined or under-resourced.
As the government moves to consolidate power into larger regional blocks, there is a legitimate fear that the 'local' voice will be swallowed by bureaucracy. When a force covers multiple counties, how does a resident in a specific borough ensure their unique concerns are heard?
The solution; a three-tiered solution for the new era
To bridge the gap between regional efficiency and local trust, I propose a framework structured at three distinct levels: Local, Regional/Operational, and National.
1. Local scrutiny: The bedrock of trust
Despite regional mergers, policing is experienced on the street corner, not in regional headquarters. Local scrutiny panels must remain rooted in counties or London boroughs. These panels should focus on the local application of police powers. By keeping this tier granular, the government can ensure that the transition to larger forces does not result in a 'democratic deficit' at the community level.
2. Regional and operational scrutiny: Overseas specialists
As the government establishes these new regional forces, a corresponding regional tier of scrutiny is essential. This body would oversee strategic regional priorities and, crucially, specialist operations units.
One of the most significant gaps in our current system is the oversight of units that cross county boundaries, such as Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) or specialist road policing. Furthermore, the government should establish a specific panel focused on specialist operations, such as armed policing. If the public is to trust the use of the most coercive powers available to the state, those powers must be subject to independent, expert community review.
3. National scrutiny: The regulatory anchor
Finally, a national body is required to serve as the ultimate guarantor of standards. This body would not manage daily operations but would instead:
- Set national guidance: Standardising data collection and the review of Body Worn Video.
- Litigate disagreements: Acting as a formal arbiter when local panels and police leadership reach an impasse.
- Ensure consistency: Ending the patchwork by making sure that a high standard of scrutiny in London is matched in the north east or south west.
The benefits of a structured framework
The government’s plan to disband PCCs and merge forces offers a 'blank slate' to get accountability right. Implementing this three-tiered suggestions would create several transformative benefits:
- Building trust and confidence: Transparency is the antidote to suspicion. When the public knows that a structured, independent framework is reviewing police actions at every level, confidence in the legitimacy of the force grows.
- Eliminating inconsistency: A national framework replaces a 'voluntary' system with a professionalised, mandatory one, ensuring justice and accountability are not dependent on where you live.
- Operational excellence: Robust scrutiny provides a feedback loop that helps the police improve. It identifies training gaps and highlights best practices that can be scaled across the new regional boundaries.
- Clarity of purpose: By separating local concerns from national specialist operations, the framework ensures that no aspect of policing — no matter how technical or 'elite' — operates in a vacuum.
This should be funded and supported directly by the Home Office to ensure: (1) consistency across England and Wales; (2) To take away any perceptions of conflicts of interests; (3) to ensure what works locally can be shared quicker across the regions; and (4) to remove any opportunity of personality clashes between police officers and staff acting as funders and those who are being advised to do things differently and those who are giving the advice.
Conclusion
The government is right to look for ways to make policing more efficient, but efficiency must never come at the cost of accountability. As the era of the 43 forces and the PCC draws to a close, we must ensure that the new regional giants are not just more powerful, but more transparent.
A three-tiered national scrutiny framework is not a hurdle to effective policing; it is the foundation of it. By embedding community voice into the very fabric of the new regional model, the government can ensure that the next chapter of British policing is defined by harmony, cohesion, and, above all, public consent.
From Montell Neufville, police ethics advisor, Att10tive.com