Policemen

The day approaches when we will be able to vote for our very own Police & Crime Commissioner. A wheeze which may turn out to be better than the Police Authorities we have now, although I still hanker after a world where the primary tier of local government gets to do everything, including police, education and health. Give us local authorities with a bit of clout, some more serious money raising powers and less interference from the centre - but that is another story.

Coverage has been fairly thin here although our local free paper (no longer delivered in our road) did carry election addresses for each of the six candidates, and very short they were too. As a result of which I thought that the current chair of our current Police Authority was the best bet. The Labour man made a bit of an ass of himself by promising all sorts of things he was not going to be able to deliver, although in his favour it should be said that he was the only candidate to come out strongly against privatising the police.

I wondered about the support that the new commissioners were going to get. Were they expected to do their business out of their own front rooms? Poked around on the web a bit but wound up sending in an email enquiry to some Home Office enquiry processing unit, which to do them justice got around to replying within a few days. The only catch was that they didn't answer the question. All they said was that 'PCCs will be required to appoint a head of paid staff and a chief financial officer. The head of paid staff will be responsible for employing the administrative staff and for acting as monitoring officer for the PCC. The chief financial officer will be responsible for advising the PCC about their financial obligations and the impact of their spending decisions. The PCC may appoint other staff, but all employees will be politically restricted and appointed on merit'. Which is all very well but it does not tell me what funds the PCC will have for his office. He will need office space, meeting space, policy wonks and support staff and one might have thought that there was some central guidance on the matter. Does he sponge off the relevant local authorities? Is he brigaded with the local courts & justice people? Is he funded directly by the Home Office? Who sets his budget? Who checks his claims for petrol for driving all around the county counting policemen?

As a former bureaucrat, I think that these sort of things are important, will crucially condition the way in which PCCs do their work. So why the complete silence on the topic? Why did it not occur to the Home Office to answer the question properly? Why does it not occur to the media to ask the question?