|
By Richard Watson
BBC Newsnight
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In the heart of rural North Wales an experiment in policing is
underway which could have major implications for the public sector
across Britain.
New IT systems are available in the remotest
parts of North Wales |
The chief
constable, Richard Brunstrom, is running his force more and more
like a business to help generate cash to pay for more bobbies on the
beat.
"We're set up to be quite entrepreneurial, to encourage our staff
to say 'how can we maximise our position?'", he told Newsnight.
Mr Brunstrom is developing in-house services - such as a police
driving school - to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds for the
force.
Radical plans
North Wales police now runs the second biggest specialist driving
school in Britain, training members of the emergency services and
the security services from across the UK who come to the region for
three week courses.
Even
more radical plans are afoot. The police firing range may be
spun-off in a similar way and the force is negotiating with private
companies on industrial estates that may be willing to pay for their
own community police officers in return for police training and
back-up.
Richard Brunstrom makes no apologies for the new businesslike
approach.
He says: "I'm fed up with people in the public sector complaining
there's not enough resources and if only you'd double my budget I'd
get better results. Of course I could! The task for me is 'what am I
going to do with what I've got?' We've got to re-engineer what we're
doing, take account of modern business practices without losing
sight of the iconic status of the bobby on the beat."
Overhaul
These kinds of entrepreneurial activities are not the only
business focus for the police force. Central to the new strategy is
a complete overhaul of the force's computer systems.
An overhaul of the force's computer systems has
been very successful |
They
used to have 39 separate databases which didn't communicate with
each other.
They have now replaced all these with just one system, bought off
the shelf from a Canadian firm, which means any police officer in
the patch can access all the data 24-hours a day.
Detective Constable Mavis Evans of the Burglary Squad says, "It's
excellent... nothing can get lost now. Everything is on one easy
system available with the click of a mouse."
This has been a controversial decision because the force has
rejected a government-backed IT scheme which has cost tens of
millions of pounds to develop.
Head of finance Tom O'Donnell says "we want to buy off the shelf"
and has criticised the government computer scheme for being out of
date and too expensive.
Savings
A police driving school is one of many
initiatives |
The
force says the new IT system not only improves policing but saves
millions of pounds in running costs which are ploughed back into
front-line policing.
The system is being made available to police on the ground even
in the remotest parts of North Wales, via mobile phone and computer
links.
Entrepreneurial activities and efficiency savings have so far
funded 150 new police officer posts for North Wales and have helped
to invest in priority areas such as burglary and forensic science.
At a time when Home Secretary Charles Clarke is urging reform to
improve detection rates, some radical initiatives in North Wales are
well underway.
Richard Watson's film was shown on Newsnight on Wednesday 18
May on BBC2 and online viewers can watch it again by clicking on the
link at the top of the right-hand column.
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