Final Report of the Morris Inquiry: The Case for Change

THE CASE FOR CHANGE
particular; police overtime, there was no discussion with me, no acknowledgment that we
were taking on new business …
Sir William Morris: Do you prepare a budget and send it out for consultation?
Mr Spindler: No.
Sir William Morris: So it is just an allocation of money?
Mr Coles: It is effectively an allocation of last year’s plus or minus a tiny bit. It is as simple as
that. There was no consideration of the change in business”
(Evidence of Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Spindler and Detective Chief
Superintendent John Coles.)
8.40 The MPS has commented that the issues highlighted by Mr Coles relate more
to how Specialist Operations disaggregated its budget rather than to any
shortcomings in the corporate process. However, the fact remains that if there were
real devolution, managers, such as Mr Coles and Mr Spindler, would have real
control over their budgets.
8.41 Another key component of real devolution is to allow managers to recruit the
best team to support them in their work:
“The process is unbelievable. The police officers would not get away with the recruitment and
selection processes that HR has in and around its own managers, and it will just shuffle them.
And it will tell me who my next HR manager is. I will not have the opportunity to select that
person. They will be appointed to me. And that is unique, and I do not call that devolution.
I will not get any say in that.” (Evidence of Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Spindler.)
“We are in this unusual arrangement where if there is a vacancy within your senior
management team, then you have to negotiate through either central HR or through the
workforce planning unit to get replacement staff. But you are not, in my view, given the
opportunity to assess the total picture. For example, a vacancy within my team for a Chief
Inspector, a Chief Inspector is offered to me, I have to interview or speak to that candidate,
decide whether or not I wish to accept them. If I am not going to accept them, produce an
evidenced business case as to why not. Then you go back and try and start again. There may
well be five or six other suitable candidates out there that could be put forward and you could
consider the pool as a whole and make a more rational decision. I am not able to do so.”
(Evidence of Chief Superintendent Alex Fish.)
8.42 In response to these comments, the MPS has told us that it runs selection
campaigns for roles with a professional specialism such as HR managers centrally
to “ensure consistency of standards, fairness and economies of scale.” It questions whether
it would be right for OCU Commanders to put candidates through another
selection process.
8.43 We do not see why a second recruitment process should be necessary. It
seems to us only sensible, and in accordance with practice in many other police
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