Policing White Paper

Wednesday, 2 December 2009 12:00 AM

Responding to the publication of the White Paper on policing, Chief Superintendent Ian Johnston QPM, President of the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales, said:

"We are broadly supportive of the measures featured in this document although we also harbour some serious fears about certain aspects.

"Many of these ideas are not new and have, indeed, been explored over recent years.

"We have long since championed the need for national standards in many areas of core business, not just uniforms and procurement. Research we undertook almost ten years ago revealed the business case for single-crewing over double-crewing of police patrols, and the calls for a single national police IT infrastructure have fallen on deaf ears for many years.

"Our hope is that including all these proposals in a single Government document will generate meaningful progress.

"We all recognise that forthcoming financial times are going to be tough across the public sector but the Police Service has been trimming costs consistently now for a considerable period of time and there should be some Government acknowledgement that savings have been made across the board.

"We would seek some reassurance over what is meant by the proposal that there should be savings of 'at least £75m per annum by 2013/14 by rationalising back-office support services'. The Service needs to know just what Home Office officials consider to be 'back-office' and at what stage police officer numbers and significant numbers of police staff jobs will be threatened in order to achieve such swingeing cuts.'

Sarah Gibbons
Communication Manager
07989 855961

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