I recently attended City Forum’s excellent one-day event, “Delivering Police Reform”. With City Forum joining forces with The Police Foundation, the event was billed as an opportunity to discuss and explore some of the most significant developments in policing policy in recent times. And it didn’t disappoint, with some top speakers offering their thoughts on the government’s ‘direction of travel’ for reform and the implications of this vision.
Police reform – the backdrop
The forum was well timed. Almost a year after the Home Secretary announced a new National Centre of Policing in November 2024. And before a White Paper on police reform, which is expected to drop shortly.
Pre-mortems – A recipe for success
The forum enabled police, partners and stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and the challenges of delivering a reform programme of unprecedented scale and ambition. Proud to sponsor this event, we wanted to walk in prepared.
As a precursor, I joined some of my colleagues for a ‘pre-mortem’ to understand why the police reform may fail, and what is necessary for it to succeed.
Pre-mortems are a tried and trusted technique to reinforce and secure any large programme we undertake.
How to make things go right
Here are five actions that we believe would go a long way to ensure police reform succeeds, delivering better outcomes for the public, for officers, and for the future of policing:
- Try not to think of “reform” as a project; instead, treat it as a change in approach – designed to unite policing stakeholders around an inspiring, clear vision of improved public safety that is delivered efficiently and without waste.
- Plot a course that allows for course corrections, taking incremental steps towards the new world whilst continuously checking that the course remains valid.
- Design national co-ordination and decision-making mechanisms that ensure change is delivered without delay. Adopt industry standards in “speed to market” that mean policing outpaces criminality, not vice versa.
- Give people hope. It’s time to move from a deficit mindset to a more aspirational and positive style of leadership that celebrates success whilst being realistic about the challenges ahead.
- Harness the power of the territorial structure to accelerate innovation in a cohesive, nationally focused way that brings the average performance of forces up far quicker than local initiatives alone can achieve.
Each imperative requires changing current thinking, abandoning existing structures and dogma and taking tangible measures to demonstrate a meaningful shift from the status quo to the new world.
Changes of this magnitude require bold, confident leadership from people who can persuade, influence, and inspire all stakeholders that policing reform is desirable, possible, and—with this leadership in place—inevitable.
If you have a question for Adrian Leer or the Triad team, please get in touch.
