Lachlan Bruce: Labour’s police shake-up repeats Scotland’s mistakes
Nobody voted for this.
Lachlan Bruce is a Conservative councillor and a policy and public affairs manager at a British health charity.
The Home Secretary’s plan to “radically reduce” the number of police forces in England and Wales is being presented as bold and modern. We are told that 43 forces are inefficient, bureaucratic and ill-equipped to face modern threats, and that consolidation will save money while improving capability.
We have heard all this before.
In Scotland, the SNP forced through the merger of eight regional forces into a single national body: Police Scotland. It was sold as a reform that would cut duplication, strengthen serious and organised crime capability, and free up resources for frontline policing.
More than a decade on, the reality is stark. Centralisation has weakened local policing, not strengthened it. Communities feel less visible police presence, not more. Decision-making has moved further away from the streets and towns officers serve. Local commanders have less autonomy and communities have less influence. The promise that scale would deliver better neighbourhood policing has proved hollow and false.
What Scotland gained in administrative uniformity, it lost in local responsiveness.
Response times have risen. Public confidence has fallen. Officers themselves speak openly about morale and overstretch; many are leaving in their droves. Rural communities feel forgotten by a system geared around priorities in the big cities and metropolitan pressures. When everything is “national”, local problems struggle to compete.
Under the old model, chief constables were rooted in place and answerable to local police authorities. Today, decisions are taken in a national headquarters hundreds of miles from the communities affected. When policing goes wrong, it is far harder for local people to know who is responsible, let alone influence change.
A single force inevitably standardises practice. But Scotland is not uniform and neither are England or Wales. What works in Glasgow or London does not always work in Skye or Ynys Môn. What suits a city centre on a Saturday night is not what a rural village needs on a weekday afternoon. Centralised systems struggle with local nuance.
The clearest verdict on Scotland’s experiment in centralised policing does not come from ministers or management consultants it comes from the public. Fewer than half of adults in Scotland now believe the police in their local area are doing an “excellent” or “good” job. Just 45 per cent hold that view in 2023–24.
A decade earlier, before eight regional forces were swept into a single national body, that figure stood at 61 per cent.
That decline is not confined to satisfaction ratings. It reflects a system that has not delivered better policing.
The force has faced …
Nobody voted for this.
Lachlan Bruce is a Conservative councillor and a policy and public affairs manager at a British health charity.
The Home Secretary’s plan to “radically reduce” the number of police forces in England and Wales is being presented as bold and modern. We are told that 43 forces are inefficient, bureaucratic and ill-equipped to face modern threats, and that consolidation will save money while improving capability.
We have heard all this before.
In Scotland, the SNP forced through the merger of eight regional forces into a single national body: Police Scotland. It was sold as a reform that would cut duplication, strengthen serious and organised crime capability, and free up resources for frontline policing.
More than a decade on, the reality is stark. Centralisation has weakened local policing, not strengthened it. Communities feel less visible police presence, not more. Decision-making has moved further away from the streets and towns officers serve. Local commanders have less autonomy and communities have less influence. The promise that scale would deliver better neighbourhood policing has proved hollow and false.
What Scotland gained in administrative uniformity, it lost in local responsiveness.
Response times have risen. Public confidence has fallen. Officers themselves speak openly about morale and overstretch; many are leaving in their droves. Rural communities feel forgotten by a system geared around priorities in the big cities and metropolitan pressures. When everything is “national”, local problems struggle to compete.
Under the old model, chief constables were rooted in place and answerable to local police authorities. Today, decisions are taken in a national headquarters hundreds of miles from the communities affected. When policing goes wrong, it is far harder for local people to know who is responsible, let alone influence change.
A single force inevitably standardises practice. But Scotland is not uniform and neither are England or Wales. What works in Glasgow or London does not always work in Skye or Ynys Môn. What suits a city centre on a Saturday night is not what a rural village needs on a weekday afternoon. Centralised systems struggle with local nuance.
The clearest verdict on Scotland’s experiment in centralised policing does not come from ministers or management consultants it comes from the public. Fewer than half of adults in Scotland now believe the police in their local area are doing an “excellent” or “good” job. Just 45 per cent hold that view in 2023–24.
A decade earlier, before eight regional forces were swept into a single national body, that figure stood at 61 per cent.
That decline is not confined to satisfaction ratings. It reflects a system that has not delivered better policing.
The force has faced …
Lachlan Bruce: Labour’s police shake-up repeats Scotland’s mistakes
Nobody voted for this.
Lachlan Bruce is a Conservative councillor and a policy and public affairs manager at a British health charity.
The Home Secretary’s plan to “radically reduce” the number of police forces in England and Wales is being presented as bold and modern. We are told that 43 forces are inefficient, bureaucratic and ill-equipped to face modern threats, and that consolidation will save money while improving capability.
We have heard all this before.
In Scotland, the SNP forced through the merger of eight regional forces into a single national body: Police Scotland. It was sold as a reform that would cut duplication, strengthen serious and organised crime capability, and free up resources for frontline policing.
More than a decade on, the reality is stark. Centralisation has weakened local policing, not strengthened it. Communities feel less visible police presence, not more. Decision-making has moved further away from the streets and towns officers serve. Local commanders have less autonomy and communities have less influence. The promise that scale would deliver better neighbourhood policing has proved hollow and false.
What Scotland gained in administrative uniformity, it lost in local responsiveness.
Response times have risen. Public confidence has fallen. Officers themselves speak openly about morale and overstretch; many are leaving in their droves. Rural communities feel forgotten by a system geared around priorities in the big cities and metropolitan pressures. When everything is “national”, local problems struggle to compete.
Under the old model, chief constables were rooted in place and answerable to local police authorities. Today, decisions are taken in a national headquarters hundreds of miles from the communities affected. When policing goes wrong, it is far harder for local people to know who is responsible, let alone influence change.
A single force inevitably standardises practice. But Scotland is not uniform and neither are England or Wales. What works in Glasgow or London does not always work in Skye or Ynys Môn. What suits a city centre on a Saturday night is not what a rural village needs on a weekday afternoon. Centralised systems struggle with local nuance.
The clearest verdict on Scotland’s experiment in centralised policing does not come from ministers or management consultants it comes from the public. Fewer than half of adults in Scotland now believe the police in their local area are doing an “excellent” or “good” job. Just 45 per cent hold that view in 2023–24.
A decade earlier, before eight regional forces were swept into a single national body, that figure stood at 61 per cent.
That decline is not confined to satisfaction ratings. It reflects a system that has not delivered better policing.
The force has faced …
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