I recently delved into a report on UK policing to see what others are doing regarding identifying “Best Value”. This report comes HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and can be found at HMIC Value for Money Inspections. A summary of the report is as follows: “HMIC’s report, ‘Valuing the Police’ shows that only 11% of the police are visibly available to the public, despite year-on-year increases to budgets for the last 40 years. HMIC warns that with looming budget cuts, the availability of the police to the public will be even further reduced, unless there is a total redesign of the police.”

Thus conventional wisdom says a cut equals a reduction in front-line service (the 11% referred to above). With the incredible baseline of data that is available in this report (a mere 2,600 pages) I’m guessing there is a way to redesign the work such that the 89% is readjusted rather than the 11%. Hats off to someone for doing the groundwork that let’s someone challenge conventional wisdom if they choose to do so.

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