A message to the new Government

5 July 2024

As we wake up under a new Government for the first time in 14 years - let's hope that it's time for a new approach to policing, writes Chair Mike Reed.

The first aim of Government should be to protect the people that it serves.Policing is the glue to the fabric of society, it stands as a constant to do this with the Peelian principles of 'the public are the police and the police are the public.'

Without an effective police system our society breaks down and anarchy creeps in.

One.
Fund us!! Policing is broke, financially and operationally. Policing needs to be able afford the ask of the new Government's communities and discharge that responsibility rather than struggling from one crisis to another, picking one group victims needs over another based on affordable not right or wrong.

What it needs is to be funded well, with officers that are paid adequately for the role they do to keep their skills and be able to recruit to meet the demand.

The last Government seemed to have a misconception that the number of cops available does rely on the amount of funding police services get. Please let's not make that mistake again. There is no 'more for less' for a service on its knees and no magic box for 'extra officers' when things go wrong.

Investing in your police forces is investing in the communities that have just elected you. They want to be safe!

Two
Let's blow the final whistle on the political game of football where policing is the ball and point scoring are the goals.Now is the time to let policing do what it does, move away from the constant interference, the social media pile on of minor individual officers’ mistakes, none of this helps anyone it distracts from the real issues, the safety and the confidence people want in policing.
They want the police to come when asked, their crimes investigated and the bad people to go be dealt with fairly.
Let policing do what it's done for many, many years without the politics!