Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has warned that policing in England and Wales is heading for failure without urgent reform, setting out the biggest overhaul of the service in more than half a century in a major speech in Manchester on Friday.
The Metropolitan Police published details of the address in advance, in which Sir Mark argues that the current system of 43 separate forces can no longer cope with the scale, complexity and sophistication of modern crime, and that reform can no longer be delayed.
“I believe this is a choice between the third greatest revolution in British policing or the inevitable decline and fewer bobbies on the beat,” he will tell the audience in Manchester, where he is appearing alongside four other police chiefs. “The real danger is not change. The real danger is standing still.”
At the heart of his proposal is a three-tier structure that would replace the 43-force model. England and Wales would move to between eight and ten regional police forces, supported by hundreds of local policing commands, with a new National Police Service taking on the most serious and complex crimes. The changes would amount to the largest reorganisation of policing since the 1960s.
Sir Mark argues that the present arrangements are struggling to keep pace with criminals who have changed and adapted, using improvements in technology while the fundamental structures of policing have largely stayed the same. Organised crime groups, fraud networks, cybercriminals and perpetrators of online child abuse increasingly operate across regional and international borders, while police forces remain organised around local administrative boundaries.
“We have 43 overstretched forces trying to do too much, with too little,” he will say, adding that the system is overly reliant on the goodwill of its workforce to compensate for a structure out of step with the crimes officers now tackle. In an interview with The Times, he described the current model as “badly designed and engineered” for dealing with crime today.
Funding is a central part of his case. Sir Mark points out that spending on policing has fallen from around 0.9 per cent of gross domestic product to around 0.7 per cent since 2010, and he warns that the consequences include reduced officer visibility, stretched services and many victims waiting too long for justice.
He argues that restructuring would remove duplication that currently exists 43 times over, freeing up thousands of roles and allowing resources to be reinvested in frontline services. Local teams would deal with neighbourhood issues, regional forces would share specialist resources, and the National Police Service would tackle the most serious crimes.
The proposals follow a consultation launched by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in January, which included plans for a National Police Service and for merging the 43 forces into a smaller number of larger organisations. At the start of the year, Mahmood unveiled a 106-page white paper setting out a new model for policing, including a national centre for artificial intelligence in policing and a “licence to practice” for officers, with many of the reforms expected to be operational by 2029.
The Home Office has defended the push for change, saying the current model has not changed since the 1960s and is no longer fit for purpose, and that a structural overhaul is overdue. A Home Office spokesperson said the government would deliver the most radical reform of policing in 200 years. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, however, has questioned whether merging forces is the best way to achieve the wider objectives of reform.
Sir Mark is delivering the speech in Manchester alongside chief constables including Sir Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police and Victoria Fuller, the head of Cleveland Police, followed by a panel discussion. He is framing the debate ahead of policing’s 200th anniversary in 2029 as a choice between reform and decline.
What happens next now rests with ministers and the review process. Lord Hogan-Howe, a former Metropolitan Police commissioner, has been appointed to lead an independent review of police force structures, and the government is expected to set out how far and how fast it will go. If the plan is adopted, the shape of policing in England and Wales could change more in the coming years than at any point since the 1960s, though the scale of the reorganisation means it is likely to be debated and phased in over several years rather than delivered at once.
