They will take on responsibility for local fire and
rescue services, becoming Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners for
their respective areas the Home Secretary announced.
The Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are:
- John Campion, PCC for West Mercia
-
, PCC for Staffordshire
-
, PCC for Cambridgeshire
This announcement builds on the provisions of the Policing and
Crime Act 2017, which introduced measures enabling PCCs to submit
a proposal to the Home Secretary to take on governance of a Fire
and Rescue Authority where a local case was made.
These PCCs will join of Essex, who became the
country’s first Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner in October
2017.
In their proposals, each PCC has identified a number of
collaborative opportunities through the new governance structure,
these include shared estate and back office functions and closer
alignment on prevention and resource deployment.
Before submitting their proposal, each PCC was required to
undertake a local consultation, considering the views of relevant
local stakeholders. As the relevant local authorities in each
PCCs area did not support the transfer of governance, the Home
Secretary commissioned independent assessments of each proposal
in November 2017.
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA)
carried out each independent assessment. CIFPA has substantial
public finance expertise and works closely with police and fire
and rescue services and was therefore well placed to carry out
these assessments.
As this process must be independent of government, it was for
CIPFA to determine the conduct of their assessment, and to
provide the Home Secretary with its opinion as to whether the
statutory tests set out in the Act had been met. In doing so,
CIPFA sought the views of the local police force, fire service
and local authorities.
The Home Secretary carefully considered the contents of the
proposals, consultation materials, the views and representations
made by statutory consultees and the PCC responses to them.
Together with the independent assessment, the Home Secretary was
satisfied the proposals demonstrated that a transfer of
governance would be in the interests of the local economy,
efficiency and effectiveness, without having an adverse effect
upon public safety.
In the interests of transparency, and in line with the provisions
of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, each independent assessment
has today been published.
