Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help ensure that Mayors and the new Local Policing and Crime Boards retain the ability to hire and dismiss chief constables so that policing leaders remain directly accountable to the communities they serve.

The Home Office is working with policing and local government stakeholders to design and implement future governance arrangements to replace Police and Crime Commissioners from May 2028. We remain committed to developing a system of police governance that maintains consistently high standards of oversight, which is joined up with other local services and that the public can trust.

Future governance arrangements will ensure that policing leaders remain accountable to the communities they serve. Policing and Crime Boards and Mayors will have the necessary powers and levers to support their governance role and hold Chief Constables to account, including the ability to hire and dismiss their Chief Constable and to set the budget. We will bring forward legislation for future arrangements as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

Through our reforms we will strengthen the process for the appointment, suspension and dismissal of Chief Constables to introduce greater fairness, transparency and balance into the process. We will also reintroduce the Home Secretary’s power to remove a Chief Constable on performance grounds, where there are serious, persistent and systemic failings. This will include appropriate safeguards, with checks and balances to protect operational independence and local accountability.