According to American Journalist Tom Brokaw “It’s easy to make a buck.  It’s a lot tougher to make a difference” The temptation for politicians to make a quick buck has been widely publicised, including on this blog. However just as some are tempted to make an easy fortune, others are tempted to make a difference without doing all of the hard work that is required to ensure that their ideas stand up to scrutiny and will improve society in a meaningful way.

We are barely 6 months into Nick Herberts experiment to bring reform and a new type of accountability to Police governance through the new Police and Crime Commissioners. Yet according to a recent news report Policing Minister Damian Green has suggested that  PCCs could extend their role to include responsibility for the other emergency services.

The Police and Crime Commissioners have varied enormously in their early decisions from those who have been very radical with support for voluntary sector agencies that can help reduce crime to those that have been very regressive in terms of re-creating a Police Authority in all but name or focused exclusively on the role of the Police. Several have gained notoriety for their decisions and others have barely surfaced since the election. On this basis extending their role might seem a high risk strategy beyond the  fundamental problems with this barmy idea raised by the Policing Minister.

The PCC is intended to bring governance and accountability to the work of the Policing and Crime Reduction. The clue is in the title. This makes a case for the PCCs to play an active role in several areas that most have not yet begun to explore. The changes to Probation that are underway within the Transforming Rehabilitation programme were developed without any reference to the PCCs. This needs to be addressed as a matter of priority. Although some PCCs have arranged for Probation Staff to work from their offices there is a great deal more to be done if the work of probation and the Police are to become better integrated, particularly as the probation family grows to include private and voluntary sector organisations. Between the Police and Probation lies the administration of our Courts,  public bodies which have been very poorly resourced over decades and would benefit from a competent publicly accountable individual to help them to develop a more effective and community focused service as well as to argue for greater resources. The previous Government moved half a step in the right direction with the creation of   Courts Boards, but these were early victims in the latest bonfire of quangos. The other public agency that impacts the Criminal Justice system is the prison service and again a well informed and capable PCC could do a lot to ensure that at a local level the Police, Probation and Prison Services along with the administration of the Courts work together and are protected from the unintended consequences of disconnected decisions taken in Whitehall. There is also a substantial piece of work to be carried out to strengthen links between the CJS and the voluntary sector and to agencies such as Social Services, a vital partner in resolving crimes such as Domestic Abuse. Apart from the need to focus on these areas, there are other  reasons why the range of 999 emergency services should not become a focus for the PCC.

The emergency services have the potential for joint working in two distinct areas. The first is operational and therefore outside the remit of the PCC and the other is in terms of maintenance of vehicles, and buildings from which they operate. This second area is already covered by the best examples of public sector asset management to which all of these services are already engaged. This means that in reality there is no new role for the PCC to create. Inevitably several of the existing PCCs have spoken out in favour of this development. Some arguing for this on the grounds of operational matters (clearly they misunderstand their role) and some on the grounds of greater efficiency which suggests they are oblivious to the extent to which their Police force is already cooperating with the other two services!

Another reason why this idea is a bad one is that Police officers like Fire officers perform a much wider role than responding to 999 calls. The risk of focusing on this activity is that  other aspects will be overlooked by these elected post holders who have so much potential to champion preventative work and so little capacity to assist with blue light events.

According to Dr Tim Brain, a former chief constable and policing analyst, “It raises the question of what the specifications of the PCC is all about, if they have that much spare capacity. There’s no proven need for modified governance arrangements in the fire service. The PCC in Devon and Cornwall has no co-terminus with the fire service. There’s one for Cornwall and one for Devon. People have to think about the compatibility issue. This suggests the PCC’s role hasn’t been thought through.” Whilst Tim Brain and I agree that this is a bad idea, I disagree with his reasoning. Geographical differences should be meat and drink for PCCs who already have numerous local government footprints to resolve. I also disagree that the fire service doesn’t need changes to their governance arrangements. The current Fire Authorities lack the involvement of Independent members, unlike the old Police Authorities. This for me is one reason why the Fire Service does need a review of its Governance arrangements. However the critical message is that this is an unnecessary distraction from the role the 41 PCCs are supposed to be engaged in!