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The full force
Given the particularly strong regional identities in Yorkshire & Humberside, it is perhaps no surprise that the four police forces in the area have failed to reach agreement on proposed constabulary mergers.
Published in September, government proposals include the merger of the 43 police forces in England and Wales into as few as 12 regional constabularies. In addition, forces were asked to detail their own proposals. Demands for mergers followed a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), which concluded that forces with fewer than 4,000 officers were not equipped to fight sophisticated modern crime. Poor communication between forces was exposed after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
Small forces are not robust enough to handle ‘protective services’ such as counter-terrorism and extremism, serious organised and cross-border crime and emergency planning alongside major crimes such as murder, and volume crime such as burglary and car crime, said the HMIC report.
Of Yorkshire and Humberside’s four forces – West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and Humberside – only one of these, West Yorkshire, is big enough to stand alone according to this criteria, precisely what Conservative MP for Shipley Philip Davies wants it to do. “Our police force is already large enough under the Home Office’s own criteria,” he said. “My view is that this is just part of the government’s regional agenda, as opposed to improving the effectiveness of the police.”
Whereas members of North Yorkshire and Humberside police authorities prefer a full regional merger of the four forces, South Yorkshire would also prefer a standalone option. “Our view is that we accept there is a need to strengthen police forces and that some forces have to do this,” said Mike Sanderson, deputy clerk to the South Yorkshire Police Authority. “But there are other forces, including us, which could achieve the requisite standards without having to merge. We are waiting to see whether the home secretary accepts that South Yorkshire could stand alone, with some additional investment – we’d prefer to see an enhanced standalone Yorkshire force.”
This is unlikely to happen, however. The home secretary has given the region three options: there can be two forces, with West Yorkshire merged with North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire merged with Humberside; there can be a merger of all four forces; or there can be two forces, with West Yorkshire standing alone and the remaining three merging.
It is the second option that North Yorkshire Police Authority favours. “We see the amalgamation of all four services as the option that has the most potential,” said Jeremy Holderness, clerk to the North Yorkshire Police Authority. “It would bring together £1bn worth of resources and free up other resources for investment.”
Whatever option is finally chosen, they do bring with them other concerns. There are, for example, worries over council tax levels.
Currently, North Yorkshire and Humberside both collect more money from the police precept element of the council tax than West Yorkshire.
There are also concerns that a merger would lead to a more complex governance situation, due to the number of local authorities that would want to be represented, and the mix of two-tier and unitary councils in the other counties. But there is one thing all four forces agree on: whatever decision is made, it must be implemented slowly and carefully, to ensure that policing does not suffer during the change period.
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