‘Accountability needs to take place in public domain’
ULTIMATELY, local accountability for GMP is these days applied via the mayor’s office – through Andy Burnham and his deputy Beverley Hughes, who has delegated responsibility for policing.
Police performance has dwindled in parallel with a reduction in public scrutiny, following the scrapping of the old police authority system.
Under the mayoral model that replaced it, public scrutiny has solely taken place via a panel that meets every three or four months and has looked at virtually no performance measures in the past four years, or the beleaguered computer system prior to it going live. Any observer of Greater Manchester’s police panel between 2017 and the end of 2020 would be forgiven for thinking barely anything had been amiss with policing, even as the force began its inexorable slide into special measures.
Some believe the old police authority system was far preferable. “The police authority had a major lever over the chief,” says one former officer. “At the end of the day, they could sack him if they wanted to. When the police and crime commissioner came in, he wanted to be the main lever of the force. And the chief would say to councillors: ‘I’m not answerable to you.’”
Mayor Andy Burnham acknowledged the implications of reduced public policing scrutiny at the last meeting of council leaders in early September. He said: “I guess if there’s a reflection on the last four years and everything that we’ve done, it’s that more of this process of public accountability needs to take place in the public domain.”