Licence to practise plans need careful scrutiny

28 January 2026

Dyfed Powys Police Federation chair Delme Rees says significant questions remain unanswered over proposals to introduce a licence to practise for officers.

The Home Office has unveiled plans requiring officers to hold and renew a licence throughout their career.

Failure to do so will risk their removal from policing.

The Government said the requirement was to ensure officers developed new skills as criminal techniques evolve.

The proposal is included in the new Home Office Policing White Paper, From local to national: a new model for policing.

 

Branch chair Delme Rees

 

Responding to its publication, Delme highlighted the potential financial impact on officers, pointing to other public sector professions as a comparison.

He said: “My wife is a nurse and she pays approximately £120 a year for her licence to practise.

“Will there be a cost to police officers for this and for the administration? It is a concern because officers are already under financial pressure after years of pay erosion.”

The branch chair said there are also questions about how a licensing system would work across the wide range of police roles.

Duty

He said previous discussions around mandatory requirements, such as requiring all officers to hold a PIP Level 1 interview qualification, caused uncertainty because not all officers conduct interviews as part of their day-to-day duties.

“Will a licence need to be specific to a role?” he said. “If so, that then raises questions about how easy it will be for officers to move between roles in the future, or to adapt as operational needs change.

"Will all ranks, including chief officers, need a licence to practise?

“And then there is the question of training and development in order to obtain one.

“Officers need to be given the protected time during work hours in order to do the necessary training.

"There are so many questions to be answered."

Merge forces

Delme said that proposals to merge police forces also needed ‘careful scrutiny’.

The White Paper includes plans for a review into dramatically reducing the number of police forces in England and Wales.

The Government said it would ‘make the police more cost-efficient, giving the taxpayer more value for money, while also ensuring a less fragmented system that will better serve the public and make them safe’.

Delme said: “This needs careful scrutiny because completely changing the policing model will cause upheaval and uncertainty for a lot of our members.

“Different forces have different back office functions that support the frontline, such as IT infrastructure, HR processes, and finance systems.

“They will all need to be brought together without compromising the service we provide.

“Any changes need to be made to improve policing, because there isn’t an automatic link between bigger forces and better outcomes.

Communities

“The concern is that with bigger forces we lose the connections with our communities and their trust.”

Delme stressed that any reform of policing needed to be alongside sustained investment in people, equipment, and estates.

He said issues affecting officers, such as pay and morale, workloads, and welfare, also needed to be addressed.

And he said that the Federation and its members needed to be part of the discussions around police reform.

“The experience of officers working at the coal face has to be listened to,” he said. “Too often, policing reform is done to officers rather than with them.

“Proposals on this scale have to include input from those actually doing the job.

“And a lot can change on the political landscape too in the time period proposed with elections and secretaries of state, so it’s important that we engage and make members' voices heard.”

Read our key takeaways from the White Paper.