An undoubted highlight of last months Police Federation Conference was a forum session entitled ‘The Essex Experience” led by Roger Baker, Chief Constable of Essex Police during which he explained how Essex Police were bucking what appears to becoming an increasingly common trend nationally of reducing police officer numbers. Under his leadership the number of fully attested police officers in Essex has increased, to date, by 440 and the plan is for that number to rise by a further 600 by 2013.

He is using savings achieved in other ‘support’ function budgets to finance these extra posts all of which will be employed on front line duties.

I think it’s fair to say that Mr Baker is a somewhat controversial figure and the knowledge that he retires from the police service this July has only served, some might say, to boost his maverick thought processes. But it is surely also significant that no other ACPO rank has publically rubbished his views and ideas. So perhaps they secretly agree with his stance?

I certainly don’t agree with all his ideas most notably only having two or three HR departments for the whole of the country-only having one for the Met is a big enough disaster waiting to happen- but his willingness to challenge perceived wisdom over the workforce modernisation programme- this is one of the Emperors counsellors telling him he’s not wearing any clothes, not a little boy! - did undoubtedly endear him to the Cops at Conference.

“If you want my advice……” he told the gathered masses on the subject of PDR’s “…….don‘t do them. They’re a waste of time.” Cue spontaneous applause.

But in fairness to Mr Baker he’s not all mouth and trousers. He has assiduously launched a radical overhaul of how his Force does its business with the sole aim of putting more cops on the streets. To achieve this laudable objective he has had to examine many areas of his organisations operation- resource acquisition, reviewing external contracts, streamlining admin functions and officer deployments and as he says himself none of this has been achieved without pain.

But crucially for me it has all been done with one strategic goal in mind- “.. the aim is to find ways of saving money and to put officers who were in back room posts back on the front line.”

Now I’m sure many other Chief Constables have similar ambitions indeed we have recently been shown an MPS document entitled “Getting to grips with the policing pledge” which as the title suggests details the Mets plans for ‘improving’ our response to calls for help from the public.

An interesting read made all the more interesting by the news that the Met is also planning to remove 180 borough based officers from their current positions to resource the new 'Sexual offences Investigation unit' or SCD2 as it will be known.

Then there’s the recent e-mail sent to all suitably trained borough officers offering them the opportunity to earn voluntary overtime working in the call centres at Hendon, Bow or Lambeth on their days off.

The ‘Getting to grips’ document is certainly a radical rethink on how we patrol and  respond to calls and requires the reader to discard any  previously held notion of how that role is best performed.

Indeed in order to maximise our performance in support of the governments policing pledge at a time when resources are scarce we are, on your behalf, being asked to support single patrolling as our ‘default patrolling style’.

Leaving aside though for one moment my deep distrust of the word ‘default’ when used in this context, as hard as I have tried I just cannot make these three MPS policies fit together as pieces of the same jigsaw that is the MPS’s overall strategic vision.

How on earth does taking officers away from front line policing complement the effective patrol strategy? Especially when one considers that the newly formed SCD 2 will be taking all of the skilled officers but not all of the work associated with sexual offences. Similarly how conducive is it to the “effectiveness” of patrol to have dead-beat patrolling officers- perhaps lone patrolling officers-on the beat.

Response team officers need to be properly refreshed and ready to act at a moments notice to unpredictable and often life threatening situations. It serves nobody's purpose to have as reported to me by my members, exhausted officers on patrol because they have been lured into foregoing their much needed rest days by the promise of easy overtime money? 

How exactly will these two policies enhance the overall service we are able to provide to the people of London?

Currently by my reckoning less than 5% of the Mets 34,000 police officers are actually out on patrol at any time and available to respond to calls from the public. The introduction of SCD2 and the voluntary overtime plan will only serve to place additional unnecessary demands upon that ridiculously small percentage of officers who are already working to capacity. How effective is that?  

All this begs one final question – is anyone in the Met doing as Mr Baker appears to be doing in Essex and taking a holistic overview of all these wonderful ideas to ensure they fit together? If there is, can they please tell me how, because despite the picture on the lid I’m really struggling to finish this particular puzzle!