North Yorkshire Police cuts "won’t weaken us"

NORTH Yorkshire chief constable Grahame Maxwell came out fighting today with an uncompromising warning to criminals – commit a crime on my patch, and we’ll lock you up.

Speaking on the day his force announced that 200 police jobs and up to 350 civilian jobs would have to go over the next four years because of budget cuts, Mr Maxwell insisted talk of a “Christmas for Criminals” by the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, was wrong.

“What I am saying to the criminal fraternity is that nothing has changed,” he told The Press. “We’re still out there, still doing our job, still identifying people who are committing crimes.

“We still have the resources we need to target criminals. We will continue to deal with everything from antisocial behaviour to international crime. We will continue to have some of the highest detection rates of any force in the country. If you commit crime here, we’re going to lock you up.”

In an exclusive interview with The Press, Mr Maxwell accepted that the funding cuts to be imposed by the Government would lead to the force’s annual budget falling by up to £15 million over the next two years, from £139 million now to about £125 million a year in 2012/13. It would fall further over the two years after that, to about £120 million a year, he said. “That’s a real dent in our finances.”

As a result, over the next four years the number of serving police officers will fall from about 1,500 today to between 1,300 and 1,350, he said. And about 300 of the 1,400 civilian support jobs will also go.

That would require restructuring of just about everything the force did if it was to stay on top of crime and of criminals, he said. “We will probably be engaging in the biggest programme of change the force has ever seen. It is driven by economic forces. It means we have to deliver the same services we deliver today with less money. But we will have to do it with £120 million instead of £140 million.”

That will be a tall order. But Mr Maxwell already has an idea of how it will be achieved.

Members of the public have been very clear that they want high-visibility policing on the streets, he says. And the government has ring-fenced money for PCSOs, the police community support officers.

So there will be no reduction in their numbers – they will stay at 183.

Elsewhere, however, there will be big changes.

To maximise use of police officers, officers and PCSOs may be asked to patrol on their own rather than in pairs. That won’t put them at risk, Mr Maxwell said, because “we will do an assessment of the safety of a patrol area first”.

There will also be an effort to reduce the top-heavy nature of the force. A comparison done by HMIC (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary) had revealed that the North Yorkshire force had a lot of sergeants compared to constables, when compared with other forces, Mr Maxwell said.

Efforts had already been made to trim the number of superior officers. And in future, when a sergeant or above retired, the question would be asked whether they needed to be replaced with someone of a similar rank, or could be replaced by someone of a lesser rank – because a constable earned less than a sergeant.

And what about the career prospects of ambitious PCs? “Some are very happy to be constables all their careers. My father was, my sister was. But there will still be promotion opportunities. Slightly less of them, but there will still be opportunities for progression.”

The North Yorkshire force will also work more closely with neighbouring forces – West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Humberside – to set up regional task forces for things such as road-traffic policing, tactical support, and firearms. This has been happening to an extent already, he said – in the investigations into the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence and the Selby canal murder, for example, officers from other regions were involved.

But it is likely to become more common, with possibly a Yorkshire-wide regional unit set up in Leeds to cover such areas of policing. That would reduce duplication of effort and make it possible to have economies of scale.

“The vision is that day-to-day policing will still be delivered by the four separate forces. So York will be patrolled by North Yorkshire police. But in future you may find that firearms teams are regional firearms teams.”

Police will also be expected to work more efficiently, he said. “We’re trying to drive out inefficiencies. So we’d like to get things right first time. So if, for example, an officer goes out to a report of a theft, we’d want them to take all the details, instead of only taking some of the details so that somebody else has to go back.”

Police might also respond in person to fewer calls in future. “We think we can deal with 20 to 30 per cent of all calls by telephone.” Inevitably, Mr Maxwell admitted, with every effort being made to maintain front-line policing, cuts in police numbers will affect what goes on behind the scenes.

Some of that is vital policing work – such as piecing together intelligence to build cases, and working with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

If civilians doing such work were to go, it would fall to police officers, and so take them away from the front line. But the force would be working with the CPS to try to minimise bureaucracy, and ensure the police only did case-building work that was necessary, he said.

Every effort would be made, meanwhile, to increase the efficiency of backroom activities such as human resources – which might even be out-sourced. “We will be trying to maximise the efficiencies we get from staff. But if somebody comes along and says they can still do it 20 per cent cheaper, then that’s the time we'll have a look at outsourcing,” he said.

Given the scale of the changes that are to be made, and the number of jobs that will have to go, Mr Maxwell said that morale in the force was still “pretty good”.

“We are not the only public service which will be affected by this,” he said. “In terms of the funding of public services, we’re one of the ones affected least.”

His message to members of the public, he added, was that “we will continue to deliver the best possible policing service that we can”.

But won’t crime levels inevitably start to rise?

Not if he can help it, he said.

Crime levels had been falling steadily for a number of years. “We have had several years of year-on-year reduction of crime. There’s less crime this year than there was last year – its about one to 1.5 per cent down. And we reduced crime by more than 13 per cent the year before.

“It is our intention to continue to reduce crime. This is one of the safest places in which to live in the UK, with one of the lowest crime rates. We hope we will continue to drive those levels down.”

Ways to reduce police numbers

How do you get rid of 500 people from a small force like North Yorkshire Police?

Police officers themselves cannot be made compulsorily redundant.

But they can, using Regulation A19, an obscure clause in the police pension regulations, be forced to retire if they have served 30 years or more.

Mr Maxwell hopes the force won’t have to resort to that to reduce police numbers from 1,500 to 1,300. If enough police officers retire voluntarily on their full pensions once they have served their 30 years, then it will not be necessary to use Regulation A19, he said. “But it’s a tool in the toolbox if we need it.”

Civilian staff can be made compulsorily redundant. But, in reducing civilian numbers by about 300, the aim will be to minimise compulsory redundancies, Mr Maxwell said.

There are staff vacancies that have been left unfilled, so that people whose jobs are declared redundant can be redeployed. And the force is also seeking voluntary redundancies. Civilian staff can volunteer for redundancy up to mid-February next year.

Could the force find funds from us?

IF the central government funding of North Yorkshire Police is to be cut, why can’t the force just increase the amount it asks local taxpayers to contribute to make up the difference?

It’s called the police precept – the element of your local council-tax bill that goes towards the police.

Theoretically, that would be possible, Mr Maxwell said. It would be up to the police authority to decide. But it is very unlikely.

There were several big increases in police precept under his predecessor, Della Cannings. “We’re now one of the highest precepting police authorities in the country.”

With hindsight, that’s a good thing, he admitted. The increases in precept enabled police numbers in the county to be increased significantly. Had it not happened, police numbers today would be much lower than they are – and after the latest round of cuts, we could have seen the number of police officers in North Yorkshire falling to something more like 1,100, rather than the 1,200 that we will see.