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Now that the electoral campaigns for Police and Crime Commissioners are firmly underway, it’s a good time to look at how it’s going and why it’s no surprise that voters aren’t that motivated to vote for them given how complex police governance has become.
There are 41 PCCs in England and Wales and they are all up for election by their local communities on 2 May. This is the fifth PCC election since the role was created in 2011. The first elections were held in 2012 and saw a paltry 15 per cent voter turnout. The reasons for this seem to be a combination of a gloomy and dark November election date that did not coincide with other elections and a lack of understanding or interest from local voters. Elections since then have had a better response and they always do better if they coincide with other local elections, as they do this year.
‘The role of the Police and Crime Commissioner is to be the voice of the people and hold the police to account. They are responsible for the totality of policing.’
Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
Depending on where you live, you may see different titles: Police and Crime Commissioner, a Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, a Combined Authority Mayor, a Metro Mayor or the Mayor of London. For a piece of legislation that sought to bring clarity over who has oversight of police forces, the fragmentation is more confusing than ever.
London is different
Take London. Mayor Sadiq Khan is up for his third election. He is a former Labour Minister and one time Fire Minister. He is not included in the figure of 41 above because he is ‘the occupant of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). To oversee the Metropolitan Police Service in London, he appoints a Deputy Mayor of Policing and Crime and delegates the functions to him or her where they are not reserved to the Mayor. At the moment it is Sophie Linden. Sophie is not elected. Before taking on this role, she was deputy leader at Hackney Council. In London, the Mayor is also responsible for oversight of London Fire Brigade, and there is a Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience, the recently ennobled Fiona Twycross.
The Metro Mayors
That’s all very complicated, but you see it elsewhere albeit in slightly different forms. Manchester is the closest equivalent where yet another former Labour Minister holds the office of Mayor for the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester. Metro Mayor Andy Burnham was first elected in 2017, he’s up for re-election this year, seeking a third term too. He delegates his PCC functions to a Deputy Mayor, former Labour MP, Kate Green. Her title is longer – Policing, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire – because in 2017, the Mayor took on the functions of the fire and rescue authority too.
West Yorkshire’s Mayor, former Labour MP, Tracey Brabin delegates oversight of police to her deputy mayor, Alison Lowe. Fire is overseen by a Metropolitan Fire Authority in West Yorkshire, so no fire responsibility for the Mayor in this part of Yorkshire. It will be the same over the border in South Yorkshire as the PCC Alan Billings bids farewell to his role and the function will be wrapped up with the Mayor from 2 May as the Home Office legislation transferred the functions after a short consultation over Christmas. By all accounts, the transfer is uncontroversial and the Mayor, Oliver Coppard is standing for re-election too, although he’s only been in post since 2022. Again, fire sits with a separate Metropolitan Fire Authority for now.
Adding fire into the mix
Completing the Yorkshires, we have North Yorkshire, with its Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, one of five in England. But only for a few more weeks as the functions move to the Mayor of the newly formed Combined Authority of York and North Yorkshire on 2 May.
North Yorkshire had problems with its last Police Fire and Crime Commissioner Philip Allot, who just weeks into the job in 2021 made tone deaf and insulting comments on how women should behave in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard. Such was the backlash, that there were wide reaching calls for his resignation. I watched the meeting of the Police and Crime Panel – who provide scrutiny and oversight of the PCC – that eventually agreed a vote of no confidence in the PCC. The panel could not remove him, they had to wait until he resigned.
The case of North Yorkshire is a telling tale of the weakness of the 2011 PCC legislation, where there are only a handful of reasons how you can remove an incumbent and none of them give the Police and Crime Panel enough teeth to do so by itself.
You’ll find PFCCs in Essex and Staffordshire. From April 2022 the list grew to include Cumbria. Cumbria County Council was broken up, which left the fire and rescue service with no home. Despite the local people responding to the government’s consultation in favour of a new and separate combined fire authority, the government ignored them and gave fire to the PCC anyway.
There’s one other place you’ll find a PFCC and that’s in controversy laden Northamptonshire. The county was split into two unitary authorities leaving fire with no home, so it ended up with the PCC in 2018. The current PFCC Stephen Mold announced recently that he wouldn’t be standing again. It was no surprise, he’s had a torrid year.
He appointed Mark Jones as his Chief Fire Officer who then resigned suddenly after less than a year in post, citing ‘injuries’; Mr Mold then appointed the CEO of his office to be the chief, failing to confirm this with the Police and Crime Panel and facing the ire of the Fire Brigades Union, she swiftly left too.
Having gone through a recruitment process late last year, Mr Mold was supposed to have the appointment of his preferred candidate, former Avon and Somerset Police AC, Nikki Watson, confirmed by the Panel only for her appearance in December to be postponed at short notice. We learned after this that the police watchdog, the IOPC, had opened an investigation into Ms Watson’s conduct but the detail was withheld from the Panel who were asked last month to confirm the appointment anyway. Unsurprisingly they were not happy about this and after a fractious meeting, where Nikki Watson sat in silence, watching the increasingly heated exchanges between members, the Panel confirmed two days later that they would support the appointment if the IOPC investigation concluded ‘satisfactorily.’
So why did Mr Mold suddenly decide not to stand in the 2 May election? He was heard to say, in response to questions about the investigation and what would happen if it went against Ms Watson, ‘I’ll drop the bitch.’ And that was the end of his career as the PCC for Northamptonshire.
The West Midlands
It would be remiss of me not to end with a quick look at the West Midlands. The fight between PCC Simon Foster and Combined Authority Mayor Andy Street is well documented in other posts on Emergency Services Times.
In a nutshell, the Home Secretary wanted to move police governance to the Conservative Mayor and the Labour PCC said that his approach was undemocratic. This comes against a backdrop of HMICFRS putting West Midlands Police into special measures after its latest inspection. Mr Foster took the government to court citing flaws in the transfer process and days before the legislation in Parliament was due to complete, the High Court agreed and said that the transfer of PCC functions to the Mayor was unlawful. And now Simon Foster will stand again as the Labour PCC for the West Midlands.
Motivating voters
It’s well worth checking out the candidates for the PCC in your area and seeing what the incumbent has been up to, because it’s clear from this round up that not all PCCs are the same and sometimes it just goes wrong. Governance of police (and fire) is important in a world where the public’s trust and confidence in the police is low. The question remains: if police governance is this complicated, what will motivate voters to go to the ballot box on 2 May to ensure that that the best candidate wins?
For more information about PCCs and the election, visit Your Voice, Your Police provided by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
