Police and Crime Commissioners will be elected for every police force area in England and Wales outside London in November 2012. They will be at the vanguard of the Government’s crime and policing reforms and are part of a programme of work to decentralise control and to put the public in the driving seat.
The first elections will take place on Thursday 15 November 2012, with elected Commissioners taking up office a week later. As well as marking a significant transition in police accountability, the abolition of police authorities will also herald a new world for community safety partnerships.
The election of police and crime commissioners will mean changes in the structures of partnerships. Commissioners, unlike police authorities, will not be responsible authorities under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. At the same time some of the powers the Secretary of State has in relation to partnerships, including the power to require a partnership to produce a report, will be transferred to commissioners. Commissioners will also be given a range of funding streams, a number of which have until now been given to partnerships. It will then be up to the commissioner to decide what community safety related services they want to commission in their area. They do not have to look to community safety partnerships to do this but could turn to the voluntary sector, the private sector or even individuals to provide the services they believe are needed. On this page, you can download a guides explore what issues community safety partnerships will face with the election of police and crime commissioners and how they might prepare for them over the coming months, as well as the implications of these landmark policing reforms for other local leaders with whom commissioners will need to work in partnership.