UK Reform

Manchester — The head of one of the UK’s largest police forces has thrown his weight behind radical government plans to overhaul the structure of policing in England and Wales, describing the proposed changes as overdue. Sir Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, has publicly endorsed proposals from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to streamline the country’s fragmented police forces into a centralised National Police Service (NPS). The proposed agency is expected to draw inspiration from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, tasked with tackling major and cross-border crimes. Under the current framework, England and Wales are policed by 43 separate forces, each operating under the oversight of individual Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). Sir Stephen argued that this decentralised model is increasingly ill-suited to the realities of modern crime. "There is something genuinely old fashioned about policing services that ...