Special attempts to fill gaps left by police cuts
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The Home Office fears highway anarchy as police budgets are squeezed and full-time officers are forced away from routine traffic work.
by Amanda Bradbury • The news that volunteer Special Constables could be empowered to stop trucks at roadside checks reflects Home Office fears that police budget cuts are weakening traffic enforcement.
The full extent of that reduction in traffic enforcement over the past few months may never be known.
But there are signs that the Home Office is very anxious indeed to fill the gaps—it is acting uncharacteristically quickly to get specials manning the hard shoulder (see news story, page 5). Whitehall is not even prepared to wait until next month for the results of a consultation exercise which proposes that Vehicle Inspectorate officers should be allowed to stop trucks.
This is part of Next Steps: a package of measures being examined by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Next Steps is designed to define and then cut police functions which could be farmed out to the private sector to save money.
Routine traffic enforcement such as multi-agency roadside checks, escorting of abnormal loads and weighing of vehicles are prime candidates for privatisation.
Some police forces are getting in ahead of Next Steps by redefining their core functions on their own (see panel).
From the police point of view, a fatal accident is always going to have a higher priority than a roadside check. Police say that when resources are tight, setting priorities becomes a matter of life or death.
Many would applaud the police for their common sense approach and the Government for keeping a tight rein on expenditure. The trouble is, although the police are doing their best to cope, no one, including the Government, can predict the long-term effects of the spending squeeze.
A Home Office leak reveals that two months ago it commissioned the Vito find out how many roadside checks were amcelled because the police had no available officers.
It is tempting to conclude that the result was so worrying that specials were ordered into the breach.