North Wales Police warns against cross-border mega-force
North Wales Police could be merged into a larger force under a UK Government review, councillors heard on Monday, with the force already arguing it should not be pulled across the border into England.
Assistant Chief Constable Nick Evans set out the plans to the North Wales Police and Crime Panel at a meeting in Colwyn Bay on Monday.
He said an independent review, led by former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, has been asked to recommend “significantly fewer” forces across England and Wales.
There are 43 forces now.
The review was announced on 17 March, given 20 weeks, and is due to report to the Home Secretary in August.
Mr Evans said the review would recommend how many forces there should be and which existing forces would be grouped together.
For North Wales, the question raised at the meeting was whether the force stays Welsh, joins a cross-border force with the North West of England, or is merged with the other three Welsh forces.
Mr Evans told the panel that North Wales has very little in common in terms of criminality with the rest of Wales compared to the North West, and that the force works closely with forces across the English border.
He said a Welsh Force Structures Coordination Group, made up of the four Welsh forces and the commissioners’ offices, had submitted evidence to the review by a deadline of 20 May, arguing that policing in Wales is different because it operates alongside a devolved Welsh Government, and that no force should straddle the Wales-England border.
His slides described the deadline as a “limited opportunity for consultation.”
Councillor Chris Bithell, a Flintshire county councillor on the panel, raised concerns heard in Welsh political circles that North Wales could lose its Welsh dimension if grouped with Greater Manchester and Merseyside.
Mr Evans said any move to take part of Wales outside Wales would face really fundamental problems because of how policing is governed in Wales.
Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman told the panel the review was at its halfway point and that the final decision rests with the Home Secretary, not the force.
Under the plans, day-to-day policing would sit within smaller units called Local Policing Areas, set up to keep neighbourhood policing, local crime investigation and emergency response running at the level of towns and boroughs even if forces are made larger.
The reforms are wider than force mergers.
Police and crime commissioners, including North Wales commissioner Andy Dunbobbin, are to be abolished. A new National Police Service is due from 2027 to take on fraud, cybercrime, forensics and national functions, in what Mr Evans described as a roughly one billion pound organisation. Legislation is expected to become law in 2027.
The plans have a Flintshire thread beyond the local councillors on the panel.
The UK Government minister defending the reforms in the House of Lords is David Hanson, Lord Hanson of Flint, who has said the reorganisation is not about devolution.
That point is contested. Plaid Cymru has argued that policing should be devolved to Wales when commissioners are scrapped, in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland, and that three independent commissions have recommended the change.
In the House of Commons on 26 January, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts MP asked Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood whether the shake-up was the moment to devolve policing to Wales. Ms Mahmood replied: “No, I do not.”
The panel agreed to keep police reform on its forward work programme and return to it as the review progresses.
The first changes, described in the presentation as pathfinder mergers, are due in this parliament in 2027, with the wider restructuring phased over the following parliament and completed by 2035.
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