CHESHIRE Police Authority is opposing ‘radical’ plans to elect a police commissioner in Cheshire.

As reported in the Guardian, a Government proposal could see residents voting for a commissioner who would set police priorities for more than one million people.

But, in a statement, Cheshire Police Authority says there is no public demand for a change in leadership.

The authority also fears the change could create ‘tension and conflict’ between Cheshire’ s Chief Constable and the commissioner and ‘politicise policing’.

“Now is not the time to introduce such radical and untested changes to policing, particularly on the back of a sustained fall in crime and the difficult financial scenario already facing the police service,” said Ainsley Arnold, vice-chairman of Cheshire Police Authority.

“The service should focus on policing not polls.”

The estimated cost of running an election for a police commissioner in Cheshire is £1.2m – the equivalent of 48 new police officers’ pay.

The authority has also voiced concerns that one individual cannot effectively represent every resident in Cheshire.

The concerns from the authority form part of its formal response to a Home Office consultation document on police reform entitled Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people.

The changes proposed in the document could see people given the chance to choose who takes charge of police budgets and remove obstacles which stop police forces working together.

The authority said it “welcomed the proposals to reduce bureaucracy and return to a more common sense form of policing and, given the current financial climate, the promise to relax many of the barriers which currently prevent effective collaboration between forces.”

The authority’s own inspection report, published in March, found it to be ‘performing well and improving’, and the body said in the past eight years it had achieved efficiency savings of more than £47m in Cheshire alone.

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