Home Office Ministers confirmed this week that the “failed experiment” of elected Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs) was over, and the role would be abolished in 2028. This news was met with a mixture of surprise, delight and for those directly affected, some dismay. But what does this mean for police governance in England and Wales?

The police service in a democracy must be subject to civilian oversight – that is non-negotiable. If you have the misfortune to live in an autocracy, or you prefer government to be a technocracy, police agencies can just be arms of the State, but that is unacceptable to most people and alien to the British policing tradition.

Some senior police leaders might feel that this “political” oversight and scrutiny only takes their time away from policing and makes their job more difficult, but that is the wrong mindset – it is an unavoidable part of the job, and the best police leaders understand how to accommodate and work with it.

So the question of governance is really only about how that oversight should be constituted – through one person or many, and either full-time or part-time – and then what powers and responsibilities should reside with the civilians who are tasked with overseeing the police. Invariably in a democracy that will be by politicians of one form or another.

Legislation to create PCCs was introduced by Parliament in 2011 (against Labour Party opposition, and in the case of one stage in the House of Lords, by just one vote), but it was a reform proposed for a good reason.

Existing police authorities were viewed as invisible, and ill-equipped to really hold policing to account and to set local priorities. No one knew who they were or what they did. They also had no ability to commission services and no obligation to take account of strategic policing priorities, like PCCs would end up doing.

In all the years that PCCs have been criticised, scape-goated, and generally belittled – usually by MPs or former chief constables who never worked closely with any of them – you rarely if ever heard anyone lauding the old system that PCCs replaced. And apart from having elected mayors in many places, I never heard anyone say mayors were a flawed model – also a single executive – and instead what you needed was some well-designed model of collective, civilian governance done by part-timers (though such models do exist in other jurisdictions).

Lack of nostalgia for police authorities was probably not surprising – they were a closed, clubby setup from the 1960s and from the days when councillors cut quiet deals with local police chiefs in smoke-filled rooms, turned a blind eye to scandals, and asked no difficult questions. Transparency and accountability were not a feature.

The PCC model got more credible over time, especially as serving PCCs were re-elected and had time to forge proper local partnerships with their convening power. Granted they had few admirers among senior police ranks, but there was a growing consensus over time that the best ones did add some real value and could contribute to public safety in ways that chief constables could not (for example, chairing local criminal justice boards, or commissioning services for victims, or supporting drug treatment services). It also became easier to defend their role and their mandate after turnouts at PCC elections improved each time.

I can confidently say (given that I was one of them!) that everyone involved in the creation of the elected PCC model in 2005-11 accepted, and still accepts, that it is not, and never was, perfect. It was a mistake to not give them more powers over the wider justice system – like probation and recruitment of magistrates. There were no serious efforts to train or induct them into the role. Their record of working collectively to advance national reforms was poor. Some PCCs seemed to think they were part of the police establishment, and not really politicians at all.

Some PCCs have been excellent, and some have been woeful. But you could say the same of many MPs, or frankly leaders in other parts of our public life. However, the PCC model was based on a fundamental democratic truth – that our police are answerable and must remain answerable to the public.  Otherwise without this, what we would have is a major public service spending tens of billions each year led by professionals who appointed each other, or who reported to unelected bureaucrats who could be very far removed from local public concerns.

After all, the whole argument of the policing profession is that policing is an expert skill – and it unquestionably is. But because of this, chief constables cannot know local public opinion better than elected local politicians – that isn’t what their career progression requires of them or what they spend their time doing as organisational leaders. And even if they did, they would not be subject to democratic removal, like elected sheriffs in the U.S., so it would be a hollow form of “accountability”.

Crucially, the PCC model was far superior to what went before because it recognised – as those who have done the PCC role know – that police accountability and being the “voice” of local people is a full time job, and part time councillors will be a poor substitute for the complex portfolio of engagement and oversight that PCCs managed. When the role was done well, it not only improved accountability, it improved policing and helped improve public safety too.

PCCs made policing decisions that impacted the public more transparent and gave residents a voice in what priorities for policing mattered most to them. I’m pleased that some of the most successful PCCs are now standing to become Mayors.

My prediction is that those parts of the country where chief constables are overseen by either county or metro mayors will have a functioning model of accountability. Those other areas overseen by “boards” will not, and transparency and accountability to the public will slide back in those areas.

Compared to a PCC, ‘Police Boards’ comprised of county councillors (who are elected on low turnouts), and nominated by each other to take up the role, are likely to be much less visible, under-resourced on data and scrutiny tools, and lacking focus or coordination – and so basically ineffective as a governance mechanism. A nod to the principle for sure, but “pretty please” accountability in practice. They are also likely to be much less engaged with the public, whereas PCCs were out in public settings and meeting residents and businesses all the time.

If Boards will have exactly the same appointment and removal powers as PCCs, but with none of the commissioning or convening power, then all that has been secured for the small number of chiefs left with this non-mayoral model is a more difficult, less coordinated oversight arrangement  with weaker partner relationships, and none of the “And crime” benefits on funding and commissioning that PCCs offered the police service.

In reality though, since 2012, we have also learnt that only the mayoral model really works because of the stronger mandate of a mayor and because of their reach into other policy areas that can support policing and the crime reduction mission, whether that is via commissioning budgets, or having a say over transport policy, housing, development, etc. This is where the real upside is for the cops.

When I worked at MOPAC (2012-15), thanks to luck and having key personalities who gelled, we had a leadership team at Scotland Yard that really got the legitimacy and purpose of the oversight role, and also saw and leaned into the benefits to the police of having the mayor above but also alongside them. Along with a serious full-time Deputy Mayor for Policing – now Lord Greenhalgh – who understood budgets and was able to go out and bat for the Met – in the media, or in the corridors of Whitehall, on funding, or legislation, or any number of other issues.

That said, PCCs were a legacy of David Cameron’s Conservative Party and they never had his level of full-throated support ever again.  Theresa May was fond of them, but only a few Cabinet Ministers in over a decade – the ones who were true localists like Michael Gove – ever really gave them the time of day.  If they had built better relationships with MPs and Ministers, perhaps abolition would have been less likely.

And despite PCCs’ best efforts to win friends and gain more responsibilities, the last government was never sold on making PCCs more powerful, and would on occasion disintermediate them – so eventually devolution momentum shifted to elected mayors.

So this was the path we were on already. We will now see the same transition with the PCC role expiring in May 2026 in places like Sussex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk (together) and Essex, to be replaced by a mayor with exactly the same powers, and then with another transition at the 2028 elections.

The real question for now is: if the Government believes PCCs have “failed”, then what makes for good policing governance, and what happens to the areas of England which are, as of yet, not set to have any executive mayoralty? Can these new Boards provide truly effective oversight, and avoid repeating the failures of the Authority model? There would be no point replacing one “failed experiment” with another, especially when we have seen that movie before.

England has never had a tidy model of police governance, and when it all began to be taken seriously post-WWI, the strong view was that only magistrates could be trusted to do it. Now we accept the legitimate role for local politicians and so this week’s Home Office announcement is more of an evolution than a revolution.

And thankfully the principle of civilian oversight is not being openly questioned, because that matters for efficient and effective policing as much, if not more, than the doctrine of “operational independence”.