Police merger can be stopped, claims PCC

Surrey's Police Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend has said she believes a massive overhaul of policing can be halted.

In January, the government confirmed it intended to merge 43 forces across England and Wales into larger, regional forces.

But Townsend said the situation had "potentially changed" since Andy Burnham took power.

Without making specific commitments, the new prime minister has said he wants further devolution, which could signal a change from previous policy.

A Home Office spokesperson said the government was "delivering the biggest reforms to policing in over 200 years to allow forces to focus on protecting their community and make the public safer".

They said: "We want to rebuild confidence by delivering the right policing in the right place, strengthening local neighbourhood policing, raising standards and ensuring national and specialist police services can be accessed by all communities."

Townsend told the BBC it was "really good news" that a review into the policing reform has been delayed.

However, she added: "We are far from a done deal right now [in stopping the reform]".

Townsend said Surrey residents did not want to see "mergers with counties that are less safe".

She added that policing reform was "absolutely needed", but said "people in Surrey... want to make sure that we retain local policing".

"There are real dangers here for Surrey," she added.

Home Office sources insist that reducing the number of forces will not make policing less local.

The reforms will reduce costly duplication and the huge disparities in performance between forces, they claim.

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