Jo Coles, York and North Yorkshire Deputy Mayor for Policing, Fire and Crime, has warned that merging police forces across Yorkshire could put rural areas at risk, dilute accountability and reduce public confidence.
Writing in the Yorkshire Post this week in response to the Government's White Paper on police reform, Deputy Mayor Jo Coles has urged the Government, under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, to ensure place is put at the heart of reforms to build on the progress already being made locally and to increase public confidence.
North Yorkshire remains one of the safest places to live in the country, with crime down 2.8% compared to last year, meaning 1,291 fewer victims. Policing has to be reformed regularly because crime constantly changes - far more crime now occurs across county lines, or online; cybercrime now accounts for 48 per cent of all crime.
But when it comes to proposals around police force mergers, currently being examined by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, the Deputy Mayor is clear that place has to come first. She has set out three risks from a Yorkshire wide police force:
- Public safety and the risk of losing the alignment with other public services. A Yorkshire wide force spanning four Mayoral areas would sever the link between the public and the police, risks rural policing and the neighbourhood policing link. It also centralises policing just at the point when other public services such as health and housing are being made more accountable to Mayors.
- Cost and whether this change would deliver good value for money for taxpayers as opposed to the risk of a shift in focus to centralising reorganisation and HR processes instead of bread-and-butter policing and progress to address the national mission to half violence against women and girls. How council tax precept would work if forces were merged is also unclear.
- The impact on public confidence and the UK’s policing by consent model if attention is diverted from delivery of increased neighbourhood policing and the tackling of serious violence in favour of a nationwide reorganisation
Speaking about the need for reform, the Deputy Mayor said:
Place should be at the heart of police reform; balancing the need for visible and effective neighbourhood policing with the changing nature of crime.
The suggestion that we could have one Yorkshire-wide police force is a real risk to our county. The Government has set out that they want more public bodies to be aligned to and work much closer with mayors. Housing, health, economic growth and resilience are all moving to Mayoral areas. It makes no sense to consider removing police from that mix.
Policing York isn't like policing Bedale, which isn't like Whitby. We absolutely need and expect the highest of standards from our police officers and police forces but forces have to be able to do that in a way that works for their place – there isn’t one standardised way to do everything because places are different and in our county, our rural areas, coastal communities, cities and towns need different things, and they need them at different times of year too.
Place based decision making has to be the priority because people and the communities they live in really matter."
