According to a report prepared for the Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee last month which was the focus of an article in the Police Oracle, 17 out of the 41 new Police and Crime Commissioners are due to spend more than the previous Police Authorities did in their first full financial year. This has been explained by some of these PCCs on the grounds that their office is fulfilling a bigger and wider role than the Police Authorities were expected to achieve. One PCC points out that her office has received 4 times as many letters and emails as the previous administration did. However the current level of correspondence is no more than 4 letters or emails a day, and bearing in mind that all of these office holders inherited a number of full time staff, this does not seem to be a real justification for spending 3.6% more than previous years.

The PCCs were elected on a range of different manifestos, even in the case of those who are members of the same political parties. However one of the primary roles of the PCC is to hold to account the financial operations of the Police force in their area. In the case of Sussex Police (where I stood as an Independent candidate) this amounted to a Policing budget of around £260M plus a further £40M received for services to agencies such as Gatwick Airport. To be elected on the grounds of financial competence for a £300M budget yet failing to properly control an office budget of around £1M does not send out a very reassuring message. None of the new elements of the role were hidden at the time of the election and whilst no one could have forseen the extent of the extra interest from the public, it was widely understood that mailboxes would be much bigger. Policing demand is by its very nature hard to predict and so these 41 people need to be able to show that they can handle unpredictable demand in their own department as well as keep their own costs under control.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the office of the PCC could run on lower costs than the previous Police Authorities. The allowances paid to the PCC are much lower than the overall allowances provided to the 17 members of the Police Authority and the need to support a committee of 17 people working part time on various activities to hold the Police to account was a burden that has been reduced substantially. In the case of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, Katy Bourne explained during the election campaign that she would generate substantial savings in the office costs compared to the Police Authority, yet she is planning to spend around 1% more than before, which she is blaming on inflation, hardly an unknown factor when she was making promises in November!

It would be easy to focus exclusively on cost and the additional levels of correspondence that these elected men and women are dealing with. However as the article points out, the new role is much broader than the old one. It is vital that as well as cost, that we focus on the value of these new roles. The role of a PCC has a twin focus, ensuring that the Police are governed effectively and that they strengthen the partnership activity with other parts of the Criminal Justice System. This second area allows the PCC to emerge as a leader not simply an auditor of costs.

It may be too early to measure such additional outcomes, but not too soon to remind them of the promises that they have made (or that the role promises). The former Policing Minister was very disparaging of the S (System) in CJS. He argued that the PCC would help to ensure that the Courts, Prison and Probation services began to operate at a local level as a coherent System. In addition to these vital areas we must not forget the work of local government, health (particularly mental health) and the voluntary sector. If the PCC manages to pull together these disparate elements then they could begin to demonstrate savings in the much larger budgets as well as reductions in the social costs of criminal activity. We need a clear focus on these savings if we are to fully understand the benefit of these 41 elected representatives might bring to our communities.