Allocating scarce resources: the PCC role

One of the more contentious issues that many PCCs will be wrestling with will be how to allocate their funds to local Community Safety Partnerships. These are scarce and diminishing resources which support a good deal of preventative and proactive work by local authorities, the police and many other partners.

I have written about this before in the Guardian and here on this blog.

Now we have the words of the Thames Valley PCC on record at the PCP conference held in July. Go to one hour and 13 minutes in and you will hear him say "I slightly flinched.... I am not going to have local party politics telling me how to distribute that money"

Well he seems true to his word: in the agenda for the forthcoming Police & Crime Panel this Friday documentation of his proposals is conspicuously absent:

Now it is possible that there has been a private communication to the PCP members and/or to Local Community Safety Partnership leads, but what of public accountability? Public accountability is meant to be what PCC based governance system is all about?!

So come on Mr Stansfeld: be brave! Let the public see your proposals for how scarce resources to prevent crime should be shared out across Thames Valley. And then let's have the debate about whether your proposals are fair or not.

Or does public accountability stop with visiting a few country fairs and evening meetings around Thames Valley?