West Midlands Police Federation’s discipline lead Dave Hadley fears changes to the police conduct process could add to the length that investigations take to conclude.

Chief constables were given new powers earlier this month to sack officers found guilty of police misconduct.

The changes mean that it will be police chiefs, or their delegate, and not Legally Qualified Chairs (LQC) who will now chair gross misconduct hearings.

Dave, criticised the changes, saying it opened up policing to accusations of ‘marking their own homework’.

He said: “This a step backwards, in my opinion. It’s reverting to a system that was replaced by LQCs because of issues around public confidence.

“This has enormous potential to undermine that public confidence, damage transparency and fairness, and lead to accusations of the police marking their own homework.”

Dave said the fact chief constables are likely to delegate the power to another senior officer raised questions as to why the changes have been introduced at all.

“Chief constables asked for the power to be in charge of hearings, yet the regulations which have been enacted allow them to immediately delegate that power to a deputy chief constable or assistant chief constable,” he said.

The whole point of these changes was Chiefs wanted to be in charge of who they employ, how can they maintain that position if they are going to delegate the power?

“If delegated powers are acceptable, what was so wrong with the power being ‘delegated to LQCs.”

And Dave said that because senior officers may be inexperienced in managing cases, it could add to the time it takes for them to be concluded.

“We’re fortunate in the West Midlands in that we have a chief who is vastly experienced in misconduct processes, but I worry that won’t be the case across the country,” he said.

“Further, the assistant chief constables (ACCs) won’t be experienced. They haven’t had to chair police disciplinary hearings over the last eight years.

“The current crop of ACC’s  –  unlike LQC’s – will likely have little experience in the case management side of things.

“We are very concerned that an already poor track record on timeliness will slip further.”