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Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities:

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Article in International Journal of Police Science and Management · December 2007

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International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 9 Number 4

Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local

authorities: Future mechanisms of police
accountability and service delivery

Barry Loveday
Reader in Criminal Justice Administration, University of Portsmouth, St George’s Building,
141 High Street, Old Portsmouth PO1 2HY. Tel: +44 (0)23 92843458; Fax: +44 (0)23
92843918; email: barry.loveday@port.ac.uk
Received 15 June 2006; accepted 11 December 2006
Keywords: Basic Command Units; local authorities; coterminosity;
devolved budgets; local commander selection; civilian staff; local
government reform; regionalisation of police forces

International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 9 No. 4, 2007, pp. 324–335.
© Vathek Publishing,
1461–3557
Barry Loveday is a member of the Advisers
Group to the LGA Community Safety Board; a
member of HMIC team for the 2004 Thematic
Inspection Modernising the Police Service; and a
member of Centrex strategic leadership develop-
ment programme (SLDP 2004). His recent pub-
lications include: The Challenge of Police Reform
in Public Money and Management (Special Issue
on Criminal Justice CIPFA October 2005); and
Performance Management: Threat or Opportun-
ity? Current problems surrounding the applica-
tion of performance management to public
services in England and Wales, Police Journal,
October 2005.
ABSTRACT
This article considers the origin and growth of the
police Basic Command Unit (BCU) and its
impact on the internal management of police
forces. It assesses the changing perception of
appropriate manpower levels for BCUs and the
impact of this on the size of these police units. It
evaluates the absence of any fixed professional
criteria in the determination of viability of the
BCU and notes the similarity between this and
the determination of size of police forces. It notes
that the effectiveness of the BCU as measured by
HMIC has not included civilian staff even
though these now make up a third of BCU
personnel and contribute to the overall efficiency
of this unit of policing. Finally it reflects on the
statutory basis planned for BCUs within the
Police and Justice Act 2006 and the Home
Secretary’s requirement made in 2005 that in
future all BCU boundaries should be made
coterminous with those of the local authority. It
also considers the current debate concerning the
determination of viability of BCUs in terms of
manpower levels and responsibilities. It presents
some current viewpoints relating to factors that
influence the overall efficiency and effectiveness of
BCUs and potential developments that could
serve to encourage local police governance within a
local government framework designed to deliver
effective community safety and local joint crime
reduction strategies.
INTRODUCTION
In its response to the Police Reform White
Paper, Building Communities, Beating Crime,
the Local Government Association (LGA)
Community Safety Advisers Panel referred
to the need for an effective mechanism to
enable local communities to determine pri-
orities and set objectives for the police. It

Page 324

also argued that councils, as locally demo-
cratically elected bodies, should play a sig-
nificant role alongside the police in
activities relating to crime and community
safety (Local Government Association,
2005, p. 3).
As part of the police reform programme,
the BCU provides the best opportunity for
encouraging both greater local involvement
in policing objectives and improving the
delivery of crime reduction and community
safety strategy. While the proposed reform
of membership of existing police authorities
is to be welcomed, the primary focus of
local government interest should be dir-
ected towards the BCU and links to the
local authority. This would also accurately
reflect current professional policing think-
ing, as identified most recently by the
Police Superintendents’ Association (2004)
in its report entitled Moving Policing Forward
— Proposals for the Future.
BACKGROUND TO BCUS
The origin of the Basic Command Unit
structure goes back to the 1990s. It re-
flected concern about the long-term costs
of existing police bureaucracies. Based on a
two-tier system of police divisions and sub-
divisions, the BCU was designed primarily
to replace both while also widening the
span of command exercised by police
superintendents. Described at the time as
the future building blocks of police forces,
the BCU was seen as a good basis for the
reduction, by way of amalgamation, of
many local police forces. A large number of
largely self-sufficient BCUs could, it was
believed, be administered effectively by far
fewer police headquarters.
Amalgamations planned within the
Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994
were not to be initiated by the then Home
Secretary. Since 1994 the local police sys-
tem has therefore been based on an increas-
ingly uneasy coexistence of BCUs and
Loveday
police headquarters, with particular ten-
sions arising over the delegation (or non-
delegation) of police budgets to local
commanders (superintendents) responsible
for BCU management. Tensions reflect the
fact that now BCU commanders, not police
headquarters, have overall responsibility
for 90 to 95 per cent of police service
delivery within any local area (O’ Byrne,
2001, p. 125).
The long-term implications of the BCU
structure on the number and composition
of local police forces have created anomalies
in relation to local command structures. In
Avon and Somerset, for example, the
Bristol Central BCU has a larger police
manpower number than Wiltshire Constab-
ulary which borders it. While Wiltshire
constabulary is, however, the responsibility
of three Association of Chief Police Officers
(ACPO) ranks (Chief Constable, Deputy
Chief Constable and Assistant Chief Con-
stable), the Bristol BCU is managed by one
Chief Superintendent. It is acknowledged
that the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit has
expressed concern over on-costs to policing
which 43 police headquarters now repre-
sent (HMIC, 2004b).
CENTRAL INTERVENTION IN BCUS
The central role of the BCU in terms of the
delivery of policing has been recognised by
the Home Office whose inspection and
audit has exhibited increasing interest in the
efficiency and effectiveness of individual
BCUs. The powers given to the Home
Secretary by the Police Reform Act 2002
have been quickly put to use as part of the
Home Office strategy of driving up police
performance. Such indeed has been the
level of commitment to police performance
management that direct intervention at
BCU level from the centre has been a
common occurrence where poorly per-
forming BCUs are identified by the Home
Page 325
Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities
Office Police Performance Steering Group
(HMIC, 2004b; Loveday, 2005).
Central intervention has been largely
based on the perceived failure of local BCU
commanders to meet performance targets
set centrally through the Home Secretary’s
National Policing Plan. These targets have
been closely monitored by Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and
the Police Standards Unit. It is widely
recognised, however, that many of the tar-
gets so set may have little or no relevance to
the BCU area, which can generate addi-
tional conflicting tensions within the BCU
command where local priorities are not
reflected in nationally set targets (Police
Superintendents’ Association, 2003, p. 5).
NUMBER AND SIZE OF BCUS
Growing central interest in the performance
of basic command units, while understand-
able, has, however, taken place against a
backdrop of regular and an increasing num-
ber of changes to the boundaries of BCUs,
which can only have made both inspection
and the identification of comparative BCU
performance more difficult. As originally
conceived by the Audit Commission, the
BCU was seen as being primarily a local
unit of policing within which the ideal
number of police manpower level was cal-
culated to be between 150 and 200 police
officers (O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 125).
On this basis the total number of BCUs
was calculated to lie between 300 and 350
nationally. With this number of BCUs the
boundaries between them and that of local
authorities could nearly be matched and
would have provided the degree of coterm-
inosity now recognised as being crucial to
effective partnership arrangements (HMIC,
2002, p. 18). However, by the late 1990s
the ideal BCU police manpower level had
risen to between 250 and 350 police
officers, with some forces having BCUs
with over 400 officers and at least one force
Page 326
having a BCU of around 1,000 officers
(O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 125).
The regular increase in the size of the
BCU reflected professional judgement of its
viability in terms of police manpower
matched to police responsibilities. One
consequence of these changes in the ideal
manpower level was to be the acceptance of
an increasing discrepancy between BCU
boundaries and those of the local authority.
It became apparent that there was little
professional concern exhibited within
HMIC or the Home Office as to the impli-
cations of creating BCU boundaries that
were in no way coterminous with those of
local (or other) authorities.
Indeed this curious disinterest in the
benefits of shared boundaries appears to
continue, as HMIC does not collect data
relating to BCU–local authority boundaries
and has not identified it as a performance
measure either. This is all the more remark-
able when it emerges that, early on in its
2001 assessment of BCUs, one particular
factor identified through HMIC inspection
that characterised successful BCU engage-
ment included coterminosity of partnership
and BCU boundaries (HMIC, 2002,
p. 23).
The current debate surrounding the ideal
BCU has been recently joined by the Police
Superintendents’ Association. This has
argued that much of the discussion about
the ideal model for a BCU has, to date,
started with a consideration of the size of
the BCU expressed solely in terms of the
numbers of staff. As the Association has
argued, however:
We consider this to be singularly unhelp-
ful. Whilst size is undoubtedly one of the
factors that impinge upon BCU per-
formance it is not of itself an absolute
determinant of BCU performance and
must be considered in conjunction with
a number of other factors that have a
more direct and immediate impact.

(Police Superintendents’ Association,
2004, p. 4)
In ranking those factors in order of
importance the Police Superintendents’
Association was to place the issue of
coterminosity as the primary requirement
and was to conclude that:
The requirement to engage in partner-
ship working makes coterminosity the
most single critical factor in determining
whether a BCU is likely to deliver
effective local policing. (Police Super-
intendents’ Association, 2004, p. 4)
Currently pressure from above is leading
not to smaller sized BCUs but to ever-
larger police units where coterminous
boundaries are unachievable. As the Police
Superintendents’ Association has also
recently argued, in relation to this develop-
ment, the current trend to create increas-
ingly large BCUs is a matter of concern. It
notes that BCUs already exist with 1,400
staff and that there are currently very real
proposals to create one BCU with
approaching 2,000 staff where it would be
questionable whether a BCU commander
could provide the necessary level of visible
leadership that is required at this level
(Police Superintendents’ Association, 2004,
p. 7).
The trend towards ever-larger BCUs
does of course provide an immediate chal-
lenge and potential obstacle to the Govern-
ment’s commitment to engaging with the
community. As the past history of police
amalgamations was to demonstrate very
clearly, as the units of policing began to get
ever larger so the distance between the
police and community grew wider (Love-
day and Reid, 2003; Young, 1993).
While the Police Superintendents’ Asso-
ciation suggests that a BCU with fewer than
400 staff would have insufficient flexibility
to respond to fluctuating demands, it is
Loveday
interesting to note that one former Chief
Constable, in referring to police manpower
levels, has argued that where forces have
BCUs of over 400 officers, then these are
likely to be unsustainable over time due to
the internal span of control and external
political demands and can be expected to
break down eventually into smaller units,
either by deliberate decision or in opera-
tional practice. As significant, in his
opinion, was just how quickly the con-
sensus as to what constituted an ideal num-
ber of officers for the BCU had so abruptly
broken down (O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 125).
POLICE MANPOWER LEVELS AND
POLICE EFFECTIVENESS
There is a remarkable symmetry to current
debates as to the necessary police manpower
level required to provide effective service
within BCUs and those which have period-
ically been generated in the past over the
minimum size of police forces. Professional
judgement has tended toward a minimum
manpower level, identified in the 1990s by
HMIC as 3,500 police officers. This would,
however, automatically mean the end of
many county forces, although little or no
evidence or independent research has ever
been conducted to support this claim.
The pressure towards creating larger,
standardised BCUs may therefore reflect a
very similar position on the part of both
HMIC and ACPO as adopted earlier
toward the appropriate size of police forces.
This might be thought unfortunate if only
because no allowance has been made for the
nature and growth of police manpower over
the last 20 years. This proved to be largely
incremental where little clear and demon-
strable evidence was to be provided by
police forces in support of such additional
manpower.
Annual manpower bids made to the
Home Office by police forces might or
might not be agreed by that Department,
Page 327
Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities
but the yardstick was available central fund-
ing not specified function or measured
need. Indeed only one notable attempt to
match police manpower resources to func-
tion and public demand was to be made by
the Home Office in its Report, Assessment
of Police Establishments by Formula (Home
Office, 1967). While developing a relatively
elaborate methodology to determine police
establishments by reference to population,
acreage, mileage and crime rates, the
Report was to note, however, that:
Since there is at present no absolute
standard of policing a formula is not
likely to produce a single figure repre-
senting the precise number of men [sic]
required by a force at a particular time.
(Home Office, 1967, pp. 40–42)
The same report was to comment that an
earlier Royal Commission had identified
the need for an adequate standard of polic-
ing but it had, perhaps wisely, never
attempted to determine itself what might
constitute an adequate standard of police
establishment (Home Office, 1967).
The 1967 report was also to provide,
rather notoriously, an Establishment For-
mula for Unit Beat Policing, yet it had at
least attempted to ascertain what the core
duties were that would need to be provided
by police officers. Subsequently there was
to be a lack of independent evaluation of
basic police functions to determine police
numbers. Indeed it was arguably not until
the 1995 Posen Review of core and ancil-
lary police duties (Home Office, 1995) that
any similar attempt was to be made by the
Home Office to identify essential police
functions or core duties and ancillary roles
which could be thereafter related to police
manpower requirements.
As the recent HMIC Thematic Inspec-
tion on Modernising the Police Service
(HMIC, 2004a) has highlighted, there is a
continuing absence as to the identification
Page 328
of core police roles and responsibilities. The
2004 Report argued that:
There needs to be much greater clarity
concerning the number of police officers
and other operational resources required
to deliver an effective operational police
service across forces. The service and
forces need to define and specify a level
of operational resilience (but) only nine
forces stated that they had made any
attempt to do this. Of those, few had
applied a scientific approach to defining
this level of resourcing with professional
judgement being identified as the defin-
ing factor in many cases. (HMIC, 2004a,
para. 6.15)
Currently there would appear to be no clear
professional or objective measure of what
constitutes an adequate police manpower
level for police forces or indeed BCUs.
Now, as in the past, the police service
appears to be almost wholly dependent on
professional judgement or guesswork. In the
absence of any guidance concerning pro-
fessional resilience or the identification of
core functions, there must be some doubt
about the value of police claims as to the
viability of BCUs in terms of their current
or future manpower level. This problem has
been made even greater by the impact of
civilianisation of police posts over the last
25 years.
RECRUITMENT OF CIVILIAN STAFF
While civilian staff have been employed
within the police service for many years,
the 1980s were to see a major expansion of
the civilian component within all police
forces. Civilianisation of many former
police functions was to be compounded in
the late 1980s by a process initiated by the
Home Office whereby additional police
establishment could only be realised by the
identification of police posts that could be

civilianised. Many forces may, as a result,
have entered into this process as a means of
increasing police establishment rather than
encouraging release of police officers to
operational roles (Joint Consultative Com-
mittee, 1990).
One consequence of the civilianisation
process, however, has been to make current
policing highly dependent on police (civil-
ian) staff who are responsible for a wide
range of both administrative and semi-
operational roles. Currently, police staff
constitute a third of the overall staffing of all
police forces although they do not form
part of the police establishment. This may
be perhaps why, in measuring the efficiency
and effectiveness of police forces, HMIC
and the Home Office have consistently
ignored the contribution of police staff to
the overall performance of police forces.
One result of this oversight has been that
police efficiency is currently judged by
HMIC on the basis of the performance of
the police establishment and not the work-
force as a whole.
This interesting lacuna within the HMIC
approach to police performance review has
been remarked upon elsewhere. In his ana-
lysis of the professional determination of
viable police force numbers, O’ Byrne
highlights the fact that:
It is ironic that although civilianisation
has been greatly encouraged by govern-
ment and HMIC and has led to civilians
filling a significant number of key opera-
tional posts, when police establishments
are discussed they are always, very insult-
ingly, ignored. It also demonstrates the
nonsense of a magical number for viabil-
ity in that an element of the service,
which makes up nearly one third of its
total, is usually ignored in the debate
(O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 126).
Just how integral the role of police staff has
now become was to be highlighted within
Loveday
the HMIC Thematic Inspection (HMIC,
2004a, para. 6.6). One additional factor also
unearthed by the same Inspection was the
absence of any rationale in the determina-
tion of functions between police officers
and police staff. As was to be found, there
were wide variations in the mix of police
officers and staff in some specific functional
areas:
The most dramatic disparity was found
in crime and incident management units
where 72% of personnel were police
officers — but this varied between 24%
and 99%. In Headquarters intelligence
units 57% of the workforce consisted of
police officers but this varied between
21% and 83%. Wide variations with no
logical rationale to explain them were
also to be found in call handling and
control rooms, public reception and
enquiry offices, custody suites, criminal
justice units and scientific support.
(HMIC, 2004a, para. 6.7)
As many police functions could engage
police staff as much as police officers, the
inability of HMIC to extend performance
inspections to include the civilian compon-
ent might be thought unfortunate. Never-
theless, up until 2004 HMIC did not
include police staff within its performance
assessment. Equally significant was to be the
discovery that the more recent Policing
Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF)
focused on operational effectiveness (ie
police officers), while the contribution of
police staff was included but only as a
subsidiary measure (HMIC, 2004a, para.
5.55). This also extends to current Public
Service Agreement targets which seek to
capture only police officer time on front-
line duty and which ignore the growing
front-line operational work of police staff
(HMIC, para. 5.55).
Finally, the problem of civilianisation
within police forces was to be compounded
Page 329
Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities
by the general absence within police forces
of any attempt to monitor the impact of this
process. There had been little if any mon-
itoring of the release of officers to opera-
tional duties which was taken as given
within most forces (HMIC, 2004a, para.
5.60). The absence of a tracking system of
released police officers could mean that
police forces were unable to demonstrate
the benefits of the civilianisation pro-
gramme and would not be able, either, to
stop individual officers or posts slipping
back into non-operational roles (HMIC,
para. 5.60). Where tracking processes were
claimed to exist, they were rarely found to
be sufficiently robust (HMIC, para. 5.62).
One consequence of the failure of police
forces to evaluate the civilianisation of posts
is that currently the police service does not
know what works and why in relation to
the use of civilians (HMIC, para. 5.64). This
problem has been compounded by the sub-
sequent failure of successive inspection
regimes to extend their review and audit
function beyond the activities of operational
police officers in the determination of
police force performance.
Currently it would appear that neither
HMIC nor the PPAF as applied by the
Police Standards Unit, are able (or willing)
to capture the contribution made by civil-
ian staff to the overall efficiency of either
individual police forces or BCUs. Neither is
the civilian component within the police
service taken into account when determin-
ing the viability of police BCUs.
This is because within HMIC and the
Home Office, viability is a matter relating
purely to police establishments, ie police
manpower. Yet as HMIC’s Thematic Inspec-
tion on police modernisation serves to
demonstrate, there are very wide variations
between police forces in their use of civilian
staff, which can mean civilian staff under-
taking roles in one force that are seen as
police operational roles in another.
Page 330
The lack of consistency in the use of
civilian staff would appear to suggest that
measuring the efficiency of police BCUs
only on the basis of police activity creates a
major problem and would not identify their
overall efficiency. To be of value any meas-
ure would have to include the contribution
of civilian staff employed. This oversight
itself might raise some doubts as to the
overall value of current inspections along
with past projections concerning the viable
size of both police forces and BCUs.
IDENTIFICATION OF CORE POLICE
FUNCTIONS
The Police Superintendents’ Association has
recently argued that a much better way of
determining the optimum size of the BCU
would be to adopt what it describes as a
bottom-up approach. Here the local
dimension becomes the guiding principle
for determining the size of the BCU. As is
argued by the Police Superintendents’
Association:
In considering the optimum size for any
BCU the process should be determined
by a bottom-up approach. This should
emanate from the amalgamation of a
number of neighbourhood-policing
units which of themselves are inherently
viable eg policing sectors based on local
authority or other self-determining com-
munities. (Police Superintendents’ Asso-
ciation, 2004, p. 7)
The importance of building the BCU up
from the local level is supported by the roles
which are ascribed to it. The core roles
identified by the Police Superintendents’
Association are:
1. prevention and detection of crime and
disorder;

2. public reassurance;
3. partnership problem solving.
These core roles can be expressed in terms
of core activities within the BCU. These
extend, inter alia, from providing 24-hour
emergency response (the basic police
response to calls for assistance) through to
the provision of neighbourhood patrols and
the investigation of all Level 1 crime within
its boundaries. Additionally the BCU
should be able to support an intelligence-
led policing approach and provide, in sup-
port of the local police commander, both a
local budget and human resource manage-
ment capability (Police Superintendents’
Association, 2004, p. 8). Where specialist
support services are required these can be
provided across a number of BCUs but in
such a way that they can take account of the
local policing plan in each BCU area.
The Police Superintendents’ Association
has identified core functions that are the
responsibility of the BCU and recognises
that the concept of the omni-competent
policing unit with resources to support
most police services is not sustainable or
desirable. In identifying functions and
thereafter the staffing required to support
them, the Police Superintendents’ Associ-
ation may also have provided a welcome
challenge to the earlier official determinants
of viable police force size. Some indication
of the likely inexactitude highlighted within
this earlier process has been remarked upon
by a former chief officer. As has been
argued in relation to police force amal-
gamations for example:
The difficulty faced by those who would
advocate amalgamations is that of decid-
ing the criteria by which the selection
for amalgamation should be made. The
usual approach is the simple one of
determining a number below which for-
ces are not felt to be sustainable. This is
difficult to prove in empirical terms and
Loveday
is usually done as a matter of judgement
— however that is defined — by some
person or organisation on which the
government places reliance eg., HMIC.
(O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 127)
This approach to determining the viable
size of a police force based on police estab-
lishment fails to engage at all with func-
tional need. Function, particularly in
relation to local policing, has, however,
become much more significant as a con-
sequence of the creation of the Serious and
Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). This
national body could begin to reinforce the
trend towards clear functional differenti-
ation in policing where local and national
policing demands are located within dis-
crete units of policing As Level 3 crime
becomes the explicit responsibility of the
SOCA, pressure for further, ever larger
units of policing may recede as greater
attention is given to police function rather
than police structure.
Within its strategy paper the Police
Superintendents’ Association also makes
reference to BCU staff rather than police
officers. In doing so it may reflect the
reality of contemporary policing within
which police functions are frequently
shared between police officers and police
staff. This only serves to question further
the non-empirical judgements made in the
past concerning viable police force size.
Taken together the evidence suggests that
there are grounds for questioning the
assumptions driving BCU (and other) amal-
gamations. The evidence may support any
local authority claims as to the overall value
of local units of policing based on BCU
boundaries made, wherever possible, co-
terminous with those of the local authority.
There are, however, additional factors
which support a close relationship between
police and local government.
Page 331
Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities
LOCAL ACCOUNTABILITY
MECHANISMS
As the Government’s White Paper, Building
Communities, Beating Crime demonstrates,
there is now a strong official public com-
mitment to both local neighbourhood
policing and to enabling the local com-
munity to help determine local policing
priorities. As currently constituted, neither
the BCU commander nor the wider Crime
and Disorder Reduction Partnerships
(CDRP) is formally accountable to the
local community.
A number of potential structures have
been identified by the Government, for
example super-parish councils and com-
munity advocates. Yet there remain clear
advantages to establishing lines of account-
ability to local authority structures.
These structures are particularly appro-
priate when local delivery of service is
strengthened by shared boundaries. This
may also provide a sound basis for other
innovations encouraging closer community
involvement. In this context the Police
Superintendents’ Association has again
highlighted the need for creating a clearer
democratic legitimacy for the BCU. This
involves locally elected members ensuring
that local communities are given an effec-
tive voice in local policing. Joint respons-
ibility of locally elected representatives and
the BCU commander would together
answer for local service delivery (Police
Superintendents’ Association, 2004, p. 6).
The Police Superintendents’ Association
argues that elected representatives, together
with the BCU commander, must become
the recognised public faces of policing and
community safety within the BCU. An
elected body should be able to hold the
BCU commander publicly to account for
the delivery of locally agreed priorities
(Police Superintendents’ Association, 2004,
p. 6).
Page 332
The future role of the local authority in
encouraging greater local accountability of
the BCU has also been identified by a
former chief officer who states that, in his
experience, ‘Policing works best where
there is a clear link between the BCU
and the local political unit’ (O’ Byrne,
2001, p. 136).
The same commentator stressed the need
for more formal local accountability
between the BCU commander and the
local government unit. This could be rein-
forced through the involvement of local
politicians in the selection of their BCU
commander and in using taxation raised by
the local government unit partially to fund
its local BCU. Such funding could account
for between 10 to 20 per cent of local
police expenditure. It would mean that if
the accountability was to be real and not
cosmetic, the local government unit had
some ability to shape the style and content
of local policing (O’ Byrne, 2001, p. 137).
Reflecting a very similar position, the
Police Superintendents’ Association has also
identified a need for the role of the local
authority to be further enhanced. Locally
elected representatives, it suggests, should
be closely involved in the selection and
appointment of BCU commanders. Along
with this should go direct funding of the
BCU to a statutory minimum level (Ploice
Superintendents’ Association, 2004, p. 6).
Based on the recent innovation of pro-
viding funds directly to BCUs, together
with access to other partnership funds, this
has, it is argued, led to BCU commanders
having the financial wherewithal to join
with partners to solve local community
safety problems. In the absence of devolved
budgets, direct funding may become the
primary method of sustaining effective part-
nership arrangements. It would give the
local BCU commander a flexibility to
determine spending in line with agreed
local priorities (Police Superintendents’
Association, 204, p. 5). It is as yet unclear as

to whether the introduction of Local Area
Agreements has helped or in fact hindered
the flexibility of spending by police within
recently piloted partnerships (Centrex,
2005).
CONCLUSION
The current debate concerning the role,
size and accountability of the BCU suggests
that there is a continuing value in drawing
government attention to the advantages
identified by police professionals in the
creation of a much closer police–local
authority relationship. There would appear
to be much value in also establishing what
constitutes core police functions at a local
level as identified by the Police Super-
intendents’ Association. This could have sig-
nificant implications for the future role and
size of BCUs.
Function rather than police establish-
ment should determine BCU viability. This
could allow for the determination of BCU
boundaries that were, wherever possible,
coterminous with those of the local author-
ity. Future determination of BCU bound-
aries should be based initially on the
amalgamation of neighbourhood, sector
based policing. It would also automatically
include police staff (all staff) and not just
police establishment.
The recommendations made by the
Police Superintendents’ Association con-
cerning the benefits of coterminosity of
police and local authority boundaries
should, given their provenance, be accorded
serious consideration. The Police Super-
intendents’ Association’s position on this
will accurately reflect the experience of
local police commanders who also con-
stitute the bulk of its membership. Local
accountability mechanisms for BCUs also
identified by that Association could provide
for much greater local authority involve-
ment in the determination of local policing
priorities and implementation of policing
Loveday
strategies. The selection and appointment of
local commanders would help to cement a
close relationship, fully reflecting current
government interest in greater community
involvement in policing and the determina-
tion of local policing priorities.
The Police Superintendents’ Association
is, however, surely right to demand that
accountability within any partnership
arrangement must extend beyond the local
police commander to embrace chief officers
of other public bodies involved in the deliv-
ery of local CDRP crime reduction strat-
egies. Identifying the role of the local
authority chief executive as critical within
this process, the Police Superintendents’
Association has emphasised the need for
mechanisms of accountability which reflect
the joint responsibility placed on partner-
ship members for local crime reduction
within Crime Reduction Partnerships.
The critical role which falls to the local
authority chief executive has been recog-
nised elsewhere (Home Office, 2000). The
leadership and commitment provided by
that officer is of critical importance in help-
ing to determine the successful implemen-
tation of local partnership strategies. There
may perhaps be a case for making local
BCU commanders statutorily members of
the local authority chief executive’s man-
agement team. This could provide a plat-
form upon which the police are able to
encourage and sustain local officer commit-
ment to crime reduction and other com-
munity safety strategies.
BCU funding has not been considered in
any detail here. It is the case that many
BCU commanders do not have control over
the budget which often remains the
responsibility of police HQ (Police Super-
intendents’ Association, 2003). Despite the
absence of BCU control of the budget,
most BCUs are nevertheless judged on
individual performance on the basis of
Page 333
Basic Command Units (BCUs) and local authorities
centrally determined and nationally applied
performance measures. These may ignore
local priorities while also encouraging the
tyranny of conformity within every BCU
(HMIC, 2004b).
The opportunity of providing long-term
limited local authority funding direct to the
BCU might also help to sustain a new
relationship which the Government wishes
to create between the police and the public
(Home Office, 2004, para. 3.2). It would
also allow local commanders the freedom to
respond to local needs and priorities for
which they would in future be made locally
accountable. This matter becomes more
salient within the context of the Govern-
ment’s determination to regionalise police
forces which will effectively end local polic-
ing as currently constituted. One conse-
quence of regionalisation will be the need
to enhance a local platform for policing the
community.
It is of interest in this context to note
that, in his speech to the summer ACPO
Conference in 2005, the Home Secretary
was to require that all police BCU bound-
aries should be made coterminous with
those of the local authority (Home Secret-
ary, 2005). This may present a challenge to
BCUs operating within non-metropolitan
county areas but nevertheless represents a
move towards ending the arbitrary redraw-
ing of BCU boundaries by chief officers
that has served to undermine the develop-
ment of local partnership arrangements.
Furthermore the future status of the BCU
can expect to be substantially enhanced
by the decision to put the BCU on a
statutory footing. Additionally any reform
of local government may lead to the
creation of single-tier unitary authorities
which might provide further encourage-
ment for the development of locally man-
aged BCUs, made fully accountable to the
local community.
Page 334
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