What are PCCs?

Changes to community safety geography

When elected Police and Crime Commissioners are introduced in November 2012, they will mean changes to the bodies responsible for crime prevention and community safety and the areas they cover.

Current (before November 2012)

Most responsibility is currently held at the level of the local authority area. Each local authority facilitates a Community Safety Partnership which should bring together partners who can co-ordinate strategy and practice.

Links with the Police are mainly local rather than at Police Force level.

Usually Voluntary and Community Sector networks are arranged within local authority areas or even more locally.

Existing Police Authorities oversee the Police Force and don’t currently have wider responsibilities.

Future (from November 2012)

The new Police and Crime Commissioners will take on wider responsibilities than the old Police Authorities which they replace. They will also be responsible for crime reduction and community safety across the whole of the Police Force area which they represent.

From April 2013, the new Commissioners will take on the Community Safety Fund budgets (which currently go to local Community Safety Partnerships). They will be free to choose whether to commission services from the voluntary sector or elsewhere to address community safety priorities which they set. But the fund will not be ringfenced and they will be free to commit all the funds they control to the Police Force budget if they wish.

They will have a duty to work with the local Community Safety Partnerships but they won't be bound by the CSP's priorities.

The performance of the Commissioners will be overseen by a new Police and Crime Panel in each Police Force area. (These panels will scrutinise only the performance of the elected Commissioner, not the Police or any other service commissioned by the Commissioner.) In England, Panel membership will be mostly made up of local councillors from the Local Authorities in the area, plus a small number of co-opted members. (The co-opted members could be specialists from the voluntary sector but it will up to the Panel to decide this.) In Wales, membership of the Panels will be the responsibility of the Home Office.

Voluntary and community organisations have an opportunity to seek to influence the agendas of the Police and Crime Commissioners, particularly before the elections in November 2012.