New landscape of policing

Book excerpt: In this report the Home Affairs Committee examines the Government's proposals for policing reform. Key findings: (i) it is unacceptable that, more than a year after the Government announced it was phasing out the National Policing Improvement Agency, it still has not announced any definite decisions about the future of the vast majority of the functions currently performed by the Agency - the phasing out of the Agency should be delayed until the end of 2012; (ii) after the Olympics, the Home Office should consider making counter-terrorism a separate command of the New National Crime Agency, rather than it being the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police; (iii) the Government must urgently appoint a head of the new National Crime Agency; (iv) a Professional Body for policing could ultimately become a useful part of the policing landscape; (v) the Home Office should be more active in encouraging and supporting forces to collaborate with one another; (vi) IT across the police service as a whole is not fit for purpose and the Home Office must make revolutionising police IT a top priority; (vii) the review of pay and conditions is having an inevitable impact on morale in the police service, but it is possible to do more to mitigate this; (viii) The Committee commends the work of Jan Berry, the former Reducing Bureaucracy in Policing Advocate, in emphasising that reducing bureaucracy in the police service is not simply about reducing paperwork but addressing the causes of that paperwork.