When analysing the Budget each year it is as important to think about what is missing as well as what is included. And this year’s Budget was no exception. Speaking on International Women’s Day, the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, announced funding for a series of ‘women’s projects’. He promised additional resources for domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services, funding for projects to help women returning to work after a career break and money to celebrate the 100th anniversary of some women winning the vote next year.
The actual money for these three projects was tiny in terms of the national Budget. There was £20 million for domestic violence services over three years, which although welcome, in no way replaces the money lost to the sector through successive cuts to local government, police and health budgets. The barriers faced by women returning to work are complex and structural; it is difficult to see how much difference £5 million for ‘returnships’ will solve them. And, while it is important to remember the struggle of those who fought for women’s right to vote, a better tribute might be action within political parties to increase women’s political representation rather than spending £5 million on celebrations .
Hammond was silent on the far more significant changes for women from April this year as a result of policies in previous budgets. These include limiting benefits and tax credits to the first two children, cutting the first child premium of £545 a year, and cutting some disability benefits by £29.05 a week. These will come on top of earlier changes including lowering the overall benefit cap and freezing benefits and tax credits at their 2015/16 level for four years.
Research by the Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede Trust, funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, has shown that all the cuts and changes to tax and benefits since 2010 will cost Asian women in the poorest third of households over £2,200 a year by 2020. Black women in the same income group will lose just over £2000, while white women lose £1,459. Women will lose more than men, and the poorest and BAME women will lose most of all. When cuts to services are included the impact gets worse. Lone parents (92% of whom are women) stand to lose 18% of their overall living standard by 2020 as a result of cuts to benefits and services since 2010.
The Chancellor said nothing about these impacts in his budget speech. The Treasury did publish a cumulative impact assessment of changes since 2015 by income, but this does not include any breakdowns by gender or ethnic background. It is hard to see how the Chancellor can meet his obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty to have ‘due regard’ to the impact of Treasury policies on equality without carrying out this sort of assessment. The Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede have shown that these assessments are possible. The question now is, will the Treasury adopt a similar approach?
Mary-Ann Stephenson is Co-Director of the UK Women’s Budget Group
I have lived and worked in Birmingham all my adult life, the last 10 years almost exclusively providing affordable credit as an alternative to high cost credit, firstly running a credit union and then Fair for You.
It’s a generalisation but on the whole our customers are women, in lower income households, with some caring obligation and in part-time work. ‘Managing mums’ is a term that has been coined in recent months. I would say these women are sassy, switched on, entrepreneurial, hard working, and not really managing very well at all. Or at least they are until something goes wrong when they need access to fair, affordable and well- designed credit.
I have sat in rooms over the last 10 years, hearing my customers talk about the need for financial education, budgeting and debt advice. I felt strongly throughout those years that they need better alternatives to the credit options that are currently available.
In 2014, a group of us spent hours listening to mums of younger children in Northfield, Birmingham tell us very frankly and openly about their experience with high cost credit. I went in there thinking I knew what Fair for You would look like, and I came out knowing what it had to look like.
Some amazing people and organisations have backed our work over the last three years, but we never lost sight of what we were told, and we delivered what those people needed.
High cost credit isn’t just expensive – all versions of high cost credit have that in common. But the other common trait is that it is designed for the benefit of the lender, and to take maximum extraction from the customers’ financial household.
The term the ‘poverty premium’ is used to describe the additional costs low income households – in other words those who have less consumer power – have when purchasing essential goods and services. Whilst the amount of that premium fluctuates in various situations, it is always consistent that the lion’s share is made up of high cost credit i.e. the additional cost of using credit when faced with emergencies. And the same households need credit when hit by emergencies, as they have less insulation and resilience to what to other people would be relatively minor emergencies. There seems little point in measures to address poverty in the UK, without removing the poverty premium.
On 22 March we release the third social impact report relating to the work of Fair for You, a national challenger to high cost credit that directly responds to all of the needs we identified in our research. Now I don’t just have the voices of the mums who came to all of the sessions we ran, I have thousands of voices of customers whose financial situation has been changed because they have access to an alternative. They prove every day, that they don’t need education and advice, they need better alternatives.
Fair for You is on line, available seven days a week, customer focused and a modern solution that uses multi-media communications including social media. Put simply, credit delivered with dignity and respect, designed to meet the lives of mums – and anyone else – who juggles, struggles and are not really managing at all.
And our customers love it – we are so proud to be rated among the highest financial services in the UK according to Trustpilot.
Please check us out and if you can support our work and our drive to change the way we lend to lower income households, then we would love to talk to you.
Angela Clements is the CEO of Fair for You
Read Centre for Responsible Credit’s Social Impact Report
The Barrow Cadbury Trust is very pleased to be partnering with the Access Foundation for the delivery of the new Infrastructure Investment Fund. With a fund of £1.8m over three years, the investments and grants we make will strengthen existing infrastructure, bring new entrants into the sector and extend support to organisations that have not previously been able to access social finance.
The new fund is entirely focused on supporting infrastructure (by infrastructure we mean social investment intermediaries and support organisations, plus the shared processes, tools, networks and partnerships that enable best practice). Our vision is, over the period of the fund, to facilitate the development of a strong, sustainable, collaborative community of support providers. We will be doing this in three ways:
- Making investments in existing infrastructure support agencies, for example to enable them to increase capacity, skill and effectiveness, grow their business or reach new markets, all in ways that increases their strength, resilience and sustainability.
- Extending the reach of the sector, by supporting new entrants (for example CVSs and other local support agencies) and exploring how support can be extended to geographic and sectoral “cold spots”. This element of the work is likely to take the form, initially, of small feasibility studies to explore provision of social investment support, or perhaps delivering a social investment funding programme.
- Thirdly, we will be looking to strengthen the sector by funding research, development and innovation. We expect to grant-fund or invest in a diverse portfolio which could include the development of new tools, standardised systems of data collection, awareness raising and communications, sharing best practice as well as projects to fill other gaps that become clear over the course of the programme.
Of course the availability of advice and support may not be the only factor preventing access to social finance, so there is scope to explore barriers and develop new solutions: blended finance, developing fresh thinking, developing shared tools and collective learning will go a long way towards accelerating change.
Access chose us to deliver this fund because of our expertise in sector infrastructure, our experience in social investment and our approach, which is to work in partnership with those we fund towards a common goal. Our model of working is to focus on a small number of policy areas, where we have deep knowledge, and try to influence decision-makers and practitioners by building an evidence base, advocating for change and ensuring that people affected by social injustices are heard by those in positions of power. Those guiding principles will be used in developing and delivering the programme.
We expect to launch the new programme in the summer with a call for expressions of interest for a first round of investments. The next few years will be an exciting time for all of us.
The new fund is entirely focused on supporting infrastructure (by infrastructure we mean social investment intermediaries and support organisations, plus the shared processes, tools, networks and partnerships that enable best practice). Our vision is, over the period of the fund, to facilitate the development of a strong, sustainable, collaborative community of support providers. We will be doing this in three ways:
- Making investments in existing infrastructure support agencies, for example to enable them to increase capacity, skill and effectiveness, grow their business or reach new markets, all in ways that increases their strength, resilience and sustainability.
- Extending the reach of the sector, by supporting new entrants (for example CVSs and other local support agencies) and exploring how support can be extended to geographic and sectoral “cold spots”. This element of the work is likely to take the form, initially, of small feasibility studies to explore provision of social investment support, or perhaps delivering a social investment funding programme.
- Thirdly, we will be looking to strengthen the sector by funding research, development and innovation. We expect to grant-fund or invest in a diverse portfolio which could include the development of new tools, standardised systems of data collection, awareness raising and communications, sharing best practice as well as projects to fill other gaps that become clear over the course of the programme.
Of course the availability of advice and support may not be the only factor preventing access to social finance, so there is scope to explore barriers and develop new solutions: blended finance, developing fresh thinking, developing shared tools and collective learning will go a long way towards accelerating change.
Access chose us to deliver this fund because of our expertise in sector infrastructure, our experience in social investment and our approach, which is to work in partnership with those we fund towards a common goal. Our model of working is to focus on a small number of policy areas, where we have deep knowledge, and try to influence decision-makers and practitioners by building an evidence base, advocating for change and ensuring that people affected by social injustices are heard by those in positions of power. Those guiding principles will be used in developing and delivering the programme.
We expect to launch the new programme in the summer with a call for expressions of interest for a first round of investments. The next few years will be an exciting time for all of us.
When we set up Treebeard Trust in 2011, we adopted the traditional foundation model: invest the assets for financial return and give away the income to charitable causes. We had a vague sense there was something unsatisfactory about this – such a small part of our assets actually deployed to support our mission – but we didn’t articulate it and certainly didn’t see that there was anything we could do about it.
Then we discovered social investment. It was one of those lightbulb moments, where a solution appears before you’ve actually identified the problem, and we leapt at the opportunity. Initially our target was to allocate 20 per cent of our assets in impact investments (we prefer the term ‘impact’ to ‘social’), with the expectation that it would take us five years to get there. As things stand currently, I think we’ll get there in under three.
We thought it would be a challenge to identify attractive opportunities, but in fact the problem has been the opposite: managing the deal flow. We made our first investment in July 2015 and we’re now up to over twenty, covering a broad spectrum of social issues and asset classes (equity, property, debt etc).
We’re excited by both the social impact they create and the financial returns they should deliver. Regarding the latter, we don’t feel we’ve compromised on our financial objectives one iota – in the current environment of zero interest rates and inflated asset prices, we suspect that the average mainstream investment portfolio carries far more risk than is generally appreciated.
More fundamentally, it has radically transformed how we operate. We no longer think of grant-making and investment as separate functions. In fact, we have outlawed the ‘G’ word altogether. It has a ring of patronage about it, a malodorous whiff of munificence. Instead, every cheque we write is an investment.
That’s not to say we don’t still provide funding to charities with no expectation of financial return, but we now refer to this as ‘impact-only investment’.
All of our investments are now subject to an evaluation framework based on their social impact and their financial risk and return profile. In the case of impact-only investments, there is 100 per cent probability that we lose all our money, and we budget 5 per cent of the trust’s assets for these investments – in line with our historic grants budget.
We allocate another 5 per cent to ‘impact first’ investments, where we expect to get our money back, but are willing to accept below market returns and/or above average risk in return for a compelling social impact.
The rest of the portfolio covers a broad spectrum of liquid and illiquid, equity and debt, high risk and low risk investments. With some, the social impact is explicit and powerful, with others it is limited or hard to discern. But in all cases it is at least evaluated, and to the extent that we can enhance the positive impact of the trust’s assets, without compromising its financial stability, we will continue to do so.
We’ve travelled a long way quite quickly, but we’re still a long way from the destination. The system is broken. A world in which individuals and corporations devote themselves to narrow, parochial goals in the expectation that the public and charitable sectors will clean up whatever mess is left in their wake is not sustainable.
Government finances are stretched to the brink of insolvency and charities, reliant on a donation-based funding model, are wholly ill-equipped to fill the gap. History teaches us that human beings are wonderfully resourceful when their backs are against the wall, and we believe we are witnessing just such a moment.
By breaking down the barrier between philanthropy and commerce, social impact investment has the potential to transform modern capitalism and unleash it as a force for good.
Find out more about how trusts, foundations and charities with investable assets can make social investments via the GET INFORMED – Social investment for boards campaign, launched by Big Society Capital.
Barnaby Wiener is a Trustee with the Treebeard Trust.
Please note, the cross-posting of this blog does not represent endorsement or necessarily reflect the view of Barrow Cadbury Trust. The blog is cross-posted with the aim of contributing to the conversation on social investment.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common and serious health issue. It affects millions of people and carries an economic and social cost of £15 billion a year nationally. People who have sustained a traumatic brain injury have a greater likelihood of mental ill health and of offending, as well as suffering from many other life difficulties.
Barrow Cadbury Trust and Centre for Mental Health recently organised a roundtable for experts from the West Midlands, hosted by the University of Birmingham, to discuss the implications of recent research about TBI and how support might be improved in the West Midlands region.
Addressing TBI in an effective (and efficient) way requires collective action across public services. No agency or sector can deal with it alone. We need a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, early identification and effective support from early childhood and throughout life.
West Midlands Devolution
The West Midlands devolution deal presents a unique opportunity to take a ‘whole place’ approach to TBI. The Combined Authority has already prioritised mental health and youth justice as cross-sector issues it aims to address across the region. Developing an effective response to TBI would contribute to both and to the overall wellbeing of the population.
Preventing head injuries is challenging but action to reduce risk would include measures to tackle domestic violence (the cumulative impact of physical abuse has been noted as a significant problem for women in prison), to promote positive parenting and to tackle bullying in schools. These also have a major impact on emotional wellbeing and future life chances. Improved support for children with ADHD and autism spectrum disorders can also reduce the heightened risk of TBI in these groups of young people. All of these actions should also reduce health inequalities by addressing the greater risks among people in the most deprived and marginalised communities in the West Midlands.
For those who do sustain head injuries, and particularly those who have experienced multiple traumas, identification is vital to ensure that effective support is offered and adjustments are made to reflect their vulnerability. Schools, hospitals, police stations and prisons can all ask simple questions to screen for head injuries. This can help them to ensure they offer support where it is needed, for example to manage a child’s behaviour in school and avoid excluding a young person whose behaviour results from a head injury where some additional support might be of benefit.
TBI and the Criminal Justice System
It is estimated that up to 60% of prisoners have sustained head injuries. It is therefore vital that the whole of the criminal justice system works with an awareness of TBI and an ability to respond effectively. Liaison and diversion teams, for example, can screen for TBI alongside other vulnerabilities. Prisons can offer all of their staff (including not just prison officers but education and other workers) training about TBI as part of becoming an enabling environment. Specialist linkworkers in prisons have also been found to provide effective support to individuals with TBI. And for people leaving prison, robust support is essential to help them to adjust to life outside and cope with the demands and difficulties they will face.
There are a number of initiatives already in place to build upon: HMP Drake Hall provides all staff with training in working with trauma and supports women prisoners who have experienced abuse and violence. The Geese Theatre Company provides ‘safe spaces’ for prisoners to explore their emotional wellbeing and what would help them to get back in control of their lives. And there are specialist services for offenders in the community, including for women, that offer peer support and help with health issues, that could provide more bespoke support for those with head injuries.
The significance of TBI is only beginning to be understood. But it is now clear that joint action that brings together local authorities, NHS organisations, schools, the criminal justice system and voluntary and community bodies (among others) will be essential to develop an effective response. From public health teams including TBI in local needs assessments and Health and Wellbeing Strategies to schools providing extra support to children who have sustained head injuries, we can bring about a bigger focus on prevention and early help. And by working across the justice system, we can enable some of the most vulnerable and prolific offenders to get their lives back on track.
In four weeks’ time, amid the pageantry of ceremonial Washington, the 45th president of the United States will be sworn into office. A man who won that office on, among many other horrors, a promise to ‘ban’ (albeit temporarily) Muslims from entering the US.
He may be rolling back on that offensive policy now the Oval Office looms in vision, but the point is telling. Fear of Islam remains real and potent across the west, even a decade and a half on from 9/11.
In Europe the ‘refugee crisis’ and a series of terror attacks over the past two years have flared tensions. Last night’s appalling incident in Berlin has already sparked a torrent of racist remarks on social media, following early reports that the driver may have been from Pakistan. It seems almost inevitable that public discourse will soon return to the sensitive topic of whether Islam is compatible with ‘western’ values.
In recent weeks Chancellor Merkel has joined the chorus of politicians floating support for a burqa ban, showing it is not just ‘populists’ focusing on the issue.
This week Policy Network’s contributors seek to go beyond simplistic rhetoric and policies, concluding it’s time to rethink the way we use terms such as ethnicity, identity, culture and race. Our contributors probe the integration debate – focusing on cases in Britain, France and Germany – to consider the effectiveness of different responses to public concern. These range from policymaking to acts of symbolism and how politicians choose to react to fear.
These pieces are part of our ongoing project on immigration and integration supported by the Barrow Cadbury Fund and follow a successful recent seminar in London: ‘Inclusive integration: how can progressives promote social cohesion in divisive times?’, the audio of which is now available.
Director of Communications at British Future, Steve Ballinger writes about The Home Affairs Select Committee Immigration Inquiry launched today and how his organisation hopes the decision makers listen to the public’s views on immigration.
Today at Westminster the Home Affairs Select Committee launches a new Inquiry into developing a consensus on an effective immigration policy. British Future is pleased to be working with the Committee on this Inquiry.
The Committee will conduct a series of regional meetings across the UK, meeting with a cross-section of the public to hear their views, starting in early 2017.
Accompanying the Home Affairs Select Committee hearings in each region is a ‘National Conversation,’ coordinated by British Future. This project will consult the public through a series of citizens’ panels in every nation and region of Britain, together with online surveys and in-depth opinion polling, feeding the results into the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry to provide a more detailed picture of public attitudes to immigration in Britain and the common ground on which people can agree.
The National Conversation aims to find out what the public thinks about who we admit to the UK and how we make immigration work for local communities, new arrivals to Britain, employers and workers. We want to know what the public thinks about integration and how best to make sure that newcomers become successful members of local communities.
British Future’s research over the last five years into public attitudes to immigration and integration has consistently found that the majority holds balanced views on immigration, which polarised public debates often fail to reflect. When they are engaged properly, people have constructive contributions to make to the immigration debate and there is considerable potential to find common ground. That is why this Inquiry is so important.
We want decision makers to hear the public’s views and to be informed by them in their policy making. Our collaboration with the Home Affairs Select Committee will provide an opportunity to do this.
The Inquiry launches today and we look forward to working with the Home Affairs Select Committee.
It is impossible to do justice to a post-referendum analysis or to go beyond the ‘known knowns’ in a short piece, but for the purpose of this blog there are several key features we need to think about when developing a strategic approach to the coming several years. The bloody nose given to the political establishment needs attention. Firstly, although the salient political hook for the Leave Campaign was migration, this was in reality a proxy for being ‘left behind’ by globalisation. People were sick and tired of being told they benefited from migration when they knew very well that they didn’t or didn’t much. Most of us who lead charities do and that leads us straight into the heart of a paradox. We want to heal the very thing we are part of creating. Or put another way we want to ‘fix’ what’s wrong with other people. Put like that it sounds pretty top down.
Secondly, it’s not as simple a binary as it first appears. Lots of the prosperous south voted Leave, Liverpool voted Remain and let’s not even start to unpick the four countries question! 52%/48% is half and half more or less and the voting patterns show not whole areas of the countr(ies) voting one way but most areas voting relatively evenly. So the divisions are not between places but within them. Even within families. Not to say there is no North/South issue, of course there is. But as charities we are going to have to think much harder about how to be effective, for example, in place based work and what funders sometimes call ‘cold spots’.
Thirdly, and from a practical point of view very importantly for our sector, many of the EU funding streams such as the European Social Fund map right onto the strongest Leave areas. What are the implications of that for the work of our social sector? I suggest bravery in refocusing should be on our agenda.
Immediately after the referendum we saw a spike in xenophobic and race hate crime. The good news is that shortly before the referendum British Future polling showed that 67% of eligible voters thought that EU citizens already in the UK should be given permanent leave to remain in the event of a ‘leave’ vote. Shortly after the Referendum in repeat polling we saw that figure go up slightly. So we can deduce that the majority of Leavers do not endorse this kind of behaviour. But we were perhaps complacent too soon. Yes, the spike has abated but not returned to previous levels.
So the community sector should certainly have a role in ‘holding the line’ in a context where some people now feel they have a licence to abuse. And we have to walk to the bit of a tightrope where we recognise people’s concerns, recognise they are not born of racism but also draw a line at what we might call ‘decency’. There is a threshold beyond which it’s not okay to go. Remainers and Leavers both.
Over the past eight years or so, we and several other foundations have been working together on public attitudes to migration, integration and British identity. We set up British Future, a new organisation working solely on the issue of opening up dialogue and trying to build a narrative aimed at the ‘persuadable and anxious middle’. We now have a considerable body of evidence which suggests that about a quarter of British society is actively hostile to migration and about a quarter actively supportive of it. That half of the population is unlikely to change their views. The other half are what are called the ‘anxious’ or ‘persuadable’ middle. About half of those are economic sceptics – typically blue collar workers who are worried about job security, their children’s futures, wage stagnation and access to housing and public services. The other half are cultural sceptics, worried that ‘this doesn’t feel like my country any more’ or ‘when I get on the bus I cannot hear any English spoken’. Opening a dialogue with these two groups needs differentiated approaches. And what we have found, among many other things, is that listening is more important than lecturing. If you give people a diet of facts and evidence, it is not only ineffective, it is counter-productive. We need much more of this more open dialogue because migration isn’t going away any time soon.
What makes people feel powerful, autonomous, in control? This is a key question for our sector because the Leave Campaign’s greatest success was the slogan ‘Take back control’. What are we going to offer people so that they feel they are getting that? The only possible answer to that is ‘bottom up’ not ‘top down’ – communities organising and delivering their own visions. There’s a lot of noise in our sector about enabling voice but it is a difficult thing to do well and is often more neglected than pursued. And we would do well to hear in mind the disability movement slogan ‘Nothing about us without us’.
A lot of the best work welcoming newcomers has come from the faith communities and we would be wise to build on that. In fact we would be wise to build on existing infrastructure in general because new initiatives take years to mature. So we should be seeking and brokering alliances at the local level, while at the same time promoting good bridge building work on a national scale. Last year we and others convened a meeting of funders to listen to key leaders in the migration sector about the refugee emergency. What they told us was that the unprecedented outpouring of good will in this country would waste, evaporate and even sour if not harnessed. So we set up a new, pooled fund for refugee and migrant welcoming work at the very local level. It is managed for us by the UK Community Fund and so far is going very well. Its focus is on the welcome given rather than the welcome received.
I have been convening and chairing a series of meetings with foundations in the UK and in Europe on the implications of the Brexit vote. Some of the practical things to emerge are concerns about European Social Fund for example. One of my reflections on that is – who is going to lobby for poorer people and communities when it comes to divvying up the UK cake? The universities, the farmers and the scientific communities are all working their socks off on this already and have capacity to act. I suggest this is one of our own sector’s responsibilities.
And finally, a word or two about putting our own houses in order, or as the young people would say, checking our privilege. Much of the charity sector still reflects our patrician roots. Certainly the charities of any size are suffering declining public trust such that we are less trusted now than the supermarkets. I think that illustrates that we are part of the problem unless we consciously, deliberately and purposefully make it otherwise. So for me part of what the Leave vote told me was to increase transparency and accountability and to beware of parachuting into other peoples’ realities without consulting them.
Of course there is good, solid community-building work in lots and lots of places. But it is not unusual for different communities to be building their own social capital in parallel universes. Where in the past we have thought of that in terms of race and ethnicity, particularly in some of the northern cities, should we now be turning our attention to broader bridge building and shared endeavours? The Sustainable Development Goals do now offer a framework for this and I urge you all to take a good and considered look at them. With the strapline ‘leave no one behind’ the major change from the Millenium Development Goals is an insistence that these goals are not only about the global south, they are about all people everywhere. We have to start decreasing the gap in equalities in every place, not just between richer and poorer nations, if we are to heal the divisions which have been so sharply revealed.
Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are here to stay. The new Prime Minister Theresa May was responsible for their introduction in November 2012 and views them as an important part of her legacy as Home Secretary. The Labour Party has now said that it supports them. Even if any new government did want to change the model, the next wave of PCCs will be elected on the day that has been set by Parliament for the next General Election in May 2020. Even critics of PCCs recognise that the big question is how to improve the model rather than go back to the pre-2012 position.
One important reason for the consolidation of the PCC model is that the sky has not fallen in. There is no evidence that PCCs are systematically ‘politicising policing’, which was the great fear prior to their introduction. However, I want to argue not just that PCCs have ‘done no harm’, but rather that they have been a quiet success story.
First, they have considerably strengthened the accountability of the police service to the public. It is my view that the old police authorities lacked the focus and legitimacy to hold chief officers’ ‘feet to the fire’. Although there is no clear way of measuring the distribution of power in the police service, it is clear to me that the introduction of a new ‘big beast’ into the local policing jungle has made chief constables much more accountable than they once were. Second, they have increased public engagement. It was said at the time of the old police authorities that one received as little as a letter a week from members of the public. Any PCC will tell you that their correspondence is of a different order of magnitude.
As a number of the blogs published on the Police Foundation website written by PCCs demonstrate (see links below), having a single point of contact and a directly elected politician with a powerful public voice has increased public participation in policing debates that used to happen behind closed doors.
Third, PCCs have unlocked innovation in policing policy. Having a full time public official focused on public safety, armed with commissioning budgets and considerable ‘soft power’, has led to new ways of doing things. It is this topic which is explored in more detail in the ‘Reducing crime through innovation: the role of PCCs’ briefing, where we seek to understand the scope and drivers of innovation since 2012, as well as the challenges that remain.
And PCCs do face considerable challenges. Demand on the police has changed considerably since the PCC model was developed, with a fall in traditional volume crime and the rise in reported ‘high harm’ offences, often committed in private spaces and increasingly enabled via the internet. This requires a major re-think about policing priorities and operating models. Moreover, the increased complexity of police work means there is a pressing need for the connectivity – between the police locally and other public services – and between police forces as a network to deal with serious crime and deliver specialist capabilities. That will require further changes to both local and national governance, as well as new models of delivery. We hope that the discussion in the briefing will help illuminate some of the ways in which these challenges might be met.
Read guest blogs by five Police and Crime Commissioners on the Police Foundation website:
- Stop and Search- getting it right, Paddy Tipping, Notts PCC
- Sexual assault and the night time economy – small ideas make a difference, Vera Baird, Northumbria PCC
- Reducing crime through innovation: the role of PCCs, Jane Kennedy, Merseyside PCC
- How can PCCs better support innovative working within their communities?, Angus Macpherson, PCC for Wiltshire & Swindon
- Driving positive change – the PCC role is about more than holding the police to account, Katy Bourne, PCC for Sussex
