Police accountability returns full circle as government abolishes elected commissioners
After twelve years of failure, police accountability returns to where it started
In Merseyside in November 2012, one in eight voters bothered to elect their first Police and Crime Commissioner. Nationally, turnout reached 15 per cent, the lowest for any peacetime election in British history. The new commissioners were meant to bring democratic accountability to policing. Instead, they brought democratic indifference.
Twelve years on, the government has declared defeat. PCCs will be abolished in 2028, their powers transferred to mayors or council-led boards. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called them "a failed experiment". The evidence is damning: fewer than 20 per cent of voters can name their commissioner, whilst two in five remain unaware the role exists.
Here's the remarkable part. PCCs replaced police authorities—committees of councillors and appointees criticised for lacking public engagement. Now they're being scrapped for lacking public engagement, with powers returning to council-led committees. British police governance has spent twelve years and £100 million going in a circle.
The invisible office
The numbers tell a story of sustained irrelevance. That inaugural 15 per cent turnout in 2012 improved marginally when elections moved to coincide with council polls—23 per cent turned out in 2024. But most voters were there for the council races, treating the PCC ballot as an afterthought. Government research found that two in five people don't know PCCs exist. Among those who do, fewer than one in five can name their local commissioner.
This wasn't failure at the margins. It was catastrophic collapse of the role's entire purpose: visible, democratically accountable police leadership.
The obscurity bred other problems. Some commissioners made headlines for expense scandals and cronyism. Others clashed publicly with chief constables in ways that suggested political theatre rather than effective oversight. Academic research in 2021 found accountability quality varied wildly depending on individual commissioner calibre—hardly reassuring for a role meant to provide consistent democratic control.
Policing minister Sarah Jones told Parliament the model had "weakened local police accountability and has had perverse impacts on the recruitment of chief constables". In some areas, fear and mistrust poisoned relationships between commissioners and senior officers, undermining the constructive partnership the reform intended.
Follow the money
The government promises £100 million in savings alongside improved accountability. These claims sit uneasily together.
Most savings come from ending PCC elections, which cost £87 million in 2024 alone. The remainder comes from closing commissioners' offices, freeing £20 million annually for "frontline policing"—320 additional constables, the Home Office calculates.
Notice what this reveals. If accountability truly drove this decision, you'd expect investment in better oversight, not savings from abolition. The emphasis on visible police officers betrays the real priority: addressing public anxiety about police presence, which matters politically, over governance quality, which doesn't.
The sums only work if mayors and council boards provide equivalent accountability at lower cost. This requires faith that mayors—already juggling transport, housing, economic development and more—will prioritise police oversight as effectively as dedicated commissioners theoretically could. It also assumes that councillors with responsibilities spanning bin collections to social care will focus adequately on policing.
Two futures, one problem
The replacement system splits into two models. Where elected mayors exist—London, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and soon others—they'll absorb PCC duties. In the remaining 33 force areas, new Policing and Crime Boards led by council leaders take over.
The mayoral model has real advantages. Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham possess political profiles that anonymous commissioners never achieved. When the Metropolitan Police stumbles or Greater Manchester Police faces criticism, voters know whom to blame. Burnham's 63 per cent vote share in 2024 suggests genuine public recognition. Khan's fractious relationship with the Met over stop-and-search and scandal response shows mayoral oversight can generate real debate.
But look closer. Despite oversight by one of Britain's most prominent politicians, the Metropolitan Police has lurched from crisis to crisis. If the Mayor of London cannot prevent institutional failure, why expect mayors elsewhere to succeed where both PCCs and Khan have struggled?
The real concern lies with those 33 force areas returning to committee governance. Chief constables will answer to council leaders managing overwhelming portfolios. Policing becomes one item among dozens on agendas already groaning under the weight of statutory duties. This looks remarkably similar to the police authorities that PCCs replaced—the same structures criticised in 2012 for lacking visibility and engagement.
The government argues integration with wider services will strengthen accountability. There's logic here: youth violence intersects with education, mental health, social care. Yet the counterargument cuts deep. When policing becomes everyone's business, it risks becoming nobody's priority.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp warns of replacing elected officials with "faceless committees of local bureaucrats". Emily Spurrell, who chairs the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, calls the move "a dangerous accountability vacuum" at precisely the moment policing faces a crisis of public trust. Both claims are self-interested, but neither is obviously wrong.
Rearranging the deckchairs
The most telling aspect of this reform is its irrelevance to actual police accountability failures.
Consider what's actually gone wrong. Officers aren't removed for poor performance. The murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens exposed systematic vetting failures. Public trust, especially among minority communities, continues declining. Police culture—racism, misogyny, closed ranks protecting misconduct—persists across forces.
PCCs failed to fix any of this. Nor is there evidence mayors or council boards will succeed where commissioners failed. London provides the test case: despite a high-profile mayor with substantial resources, the Metropolitan Police has faced relentless scandal. Racism, misogyny, homophobia and vetting failures persist regardless of governance structure. Trust among Black Londoners remains far below that of white residents despite years of mayoral action plans.
The lesson is uncomfortable. Police accountability problems run deeper than governance arrangements. The power to fire a chief constable means little if the culture, recruitment and performance systems producing poor policing remain untouched. Structural reform offers the appearance of action whilst fundamental problems fester.
The government promises a Police Reform White Paper addressing standards, performance management and professional conduct. If these succeed, governance structure may prove secondary. If they fail, it won't matter whether oversight comes from a PCC, a mayor or a council board. You cannot solve cultural rot with organisational charts.
The lesson nobody learns
There's grim predictability to this cycle. In 2012, police authorities supposedly lacked democratic legitimacy and public visibility. PCCs would fix this with directly elected individuals holding clear mandates. In 2025, we're told PCCs lack democratic engagement and public visibility, so we're returning to committee-based governance involving councils.
Two possibilities emerge. Either police governance is uniquely intractable, with no structure capable of delivering both effective oversight and genuine public engagement. Or the problem isn't structure at all. Most voters simply don't prioritise police governance enough to engage with any democratic mechanism, whether voting for commissioners, recognising their mayor's policing role, or understanding which council leader oversees their force.
If the latter diagnosis holds—and the evidence strongly suggests it does—the 2028 reform will fail just as comprehensively as its 2012 predecessor. Council boards will struggle for visibility and engagement exactly as police authorities did before them. In another decade, perhaps, fresh calls will emerge for dedicated elected commissioners to restore accountability. The wheel will complete another pointless rotation.
Meanwhile, £100 million in savings will fund 320 additional police officers, visible on streets where voters notice them and politicians need them. The governance structures overseeing those officers will remain invisible to most of the public, which neither voters nor politicians particularly mind.
Perhaps that's the real lesson of this failed experiment. When it comes to policing, the public wants results, not accountability mechanisms. Whether that's reassuring or troubling depends entirely on how much faith one retains in police leadership to deliver those results without democratic oversight that actually works.