'Bigger doesn't mean better' for police reforms

Lancashire's former police and crime commissioner says the planned abolition of the force he oversaw risks swallowing up time and resources – without making the county any safer.

Andrew Snowden, who held the role between 2021 and 2024, was commenting on government reforms announced last week which will see the creation of regional forces to replace locally-led services focused solely on areas like Lancashire.

Snowden, who is now the Conservative MP for Fylde, warned that "bigger isn't always better".

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to cut the current 43 individual forces across England and Wales to as few as 12 in an attempt to ensure comparable police capabilities in each area.

Mahmood said the "varying sizes" of the current network meant that the smaller organisations were not equipped to handle the most "complex investigations".

Snowden, who was unseated as commissioner at elections in 2024 by his Labour predecessor Clive Grunshaw, conceded that "if you were to start from scratch and draw a map of how police forces would look, you wouldn't start with where we are today".

However, he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that there were reasons to doubt that the planned merging of existing force areas will be an improvement.

"The evidence clearly shows that bigger isn't always better, with the larger metropolitan forces often having worse performance and lower public confidence than many of the county forces.

"Therefore, the evidence – not just my opinion – shows that simply making everything bigger, won't work.

"The risk is that police forces become hugely distracted and consumed by large and complex mergers, diverting resources for some considerable time from crime fighting, to complete organisational changes that won't actually improve performance – which will not be good for anyone," Snowden said.

Last week Grunshaw revealed he was also concerned that any force mergers should be "driven by clear evidence that [they] will improve outcomes for the public".

While welcoming the creation of a new national police service to deal with serious organised crime, fraud and counter-terrorism, he added that policing "must remain rooted in the communities it serves".

The home secretary's planned overhaul includes a commitment to the creation of local policing areas and a retained focus on neighbourhood work.

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