- Conference
- 2014 Police & Justice Conference
- Date
- 24 June 2014
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that UNISON:
1)Has so far supported the creation of the College of Policing as an independent professional body for all those working in the profession of policing;
2)Is represented on the College Professional Committee;
3)Has declined a directorship on the College Board on account of concerns over the potential conflict of interest between the role of a College director and an independent trade union;
Conference accepts that the College has not yet had time to mature as a genuine professional body, but notes with concern that the College:
a)Is run by a Board appointed by the Home Secretary;
b)Does not yet have a governance model which reflects the models of other professional bodies, or Royal Colleges, most of which have an elected Council of practitioners to run them;
c)Lacks any means, at present, for securing the democratic buy in of the police workforce;
d)Runs the risk of being overly identified with the Home Office, or Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), because of its closed governance arrangements;
e)Has yet to:
i)separate out its role as a professional body, from its previous National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) role as a Home Office quango which worked to the orders of Government;
ii)separate the ‘professional’ ACPO business areas that it has taken over from those operational/managerial ACPO business areas, that do not belong in a genuine independent professional body;
iii)establish an acceptable consultation machinery to allow the views of workforce representatives to influence the creation of College products.
f) Has sometimes promoted ideas that seem to have little or no credence in the Service – for example the idea of volunteer PCSOs.
g) May struggle to persuade the workforce to pay for membership subscriptions when the three year free membership comes to an end, if it cannot evolve into a genuine open, and democratically controlled, professional body.
Conference believes that there is a role for an independent professional body that can raise professional standards, speak with authority on policing matters and support police staff in their careers. In order to make this happen, Conference calls on the Police and Justice SGE to seek to ensure that the College:
A)Consults widely within the police service and with outside stakeholders on a more open and democratic governance structure;
B)Develops, in the meantime, a proper consultative forum for the trade union and staff associations to have a say in the development of College products;
C)Creates a more democratic decision making process that relies on a consensus within the profession;
D)Is more open and transparent in the way it consults on key issues;
E)Avoids becoming an organisation that speaks only on behalf of the Home Office and/or police leaders;
F)Separates off former ACPO managerial work from its remit and concentrates on being a professional body;
G)Genuinely involves the whole police workforce in professional networks;
H)Strives to demonstrate its offer to police staff whatever their role or seniority