Final Report of the Morris Inquiry: The Case for Change

THE CAPACITY TO DELIVER
8.35 Devolution is now being applied to more and more functions. The MPS
acknowledges that the process is incomplete, although it contends that the
organisation is making advances:
“We are now devolving 80 per cent of the budget to boroughs and to OCUs: that is including
police pay, which is obviously the main component.”
(Evidence of the Deputy Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.)
8.36 We support the move to empowering local managers, in the many functions
where it is appropriate to do so.
“But let us be clear, they do not happen just by giving people the job; you have to develop
their skills and support them. I think there are some key components of good devolution, and
these are all responsibilities that I attach to a leader of a service. One is, are you clear about
what your objectives are and are they clearly communicated across the organisation? …
“Secondly, have you got in place good control and monitoring systems so the people to which
you give responsibility know for themselves how they are performing, have reliable information
coming available to them?
“Thirdly, do you have a good central function that is capable of good strategic planning and
special intervention – and I guess this is particularly important for the Metropolitan service –
for all those range of issues that cannot be dealt with at local delivery level.”
(Evidence of Sir Michael Lyons.)
8.37 It appears to us that some aspects of devolution do not operate effectively.
We acknowledge that our impression may be due to the fact that the process of
devolution is incomplete, but nevertheless we thought we should highlight two
particular areas of concern.
8.38 One of our witnesses felt that: “There is devolution of things that really do not
matter that much, but things that do matter are still controlled from the centre, particularly
around human resources.” (Evidence of Detective Chief Superintendent Coles.) It is
obviously a concern for the future, and for the proper implementation of our
recommendations, if such a view is more widely held.
8.39 Control and use of budgets is a key component to making a devolved
structure work and to encourage innovation. Therefore, we were surprised to hear
from two OCU Commanders that that was not the way the current system works:
“Mr Spindler: I am not aware of any great devolution. I do not feel I have particular control of
my £25 million budget, and indeed it can be taken away from me. It is one of the differences
between the boroughs and TP (Territorial Policing) and SCD (Specialist Crime Directorate) is
that we have a large and quite powerful ACPO team that need to balance across the
directorate the spends and we can be penalised for managing our budgets.We are not
consulted – and this is a big frustration for me this year – in the setting of our budget in
185