Unless there is a fundamental reform of policing in this country, police and crime commissioners are irrelevant and the wrong answer, says John Smith.

'A sticking plaster on a suppurating sore' is one of the kinder criticisms of the police and crime commissioner (PCC) process. Suppurating sore? Surely an over-the-top view?

Well, maybe, but something is not quite right when there are 8,500 corruption claims against the police in three years, causing the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) chairman to observe that: 'This [IPCC Report] illustrates the kind of behaviour that undermines public confidence in the police.'

If the implied social contract of policing by consent is being battered by the volume of complaints and such stupidities as the tasering of a blind man in Chorley – 'I thought the white stick was a samurai sword, M'lud' –or the killing of a man in Hackney – 'I thought the chair leg was a gun, M'lud' – let alone much wider and deeper issues such as cover-ups at Hillsborough, Merseyside and South Wales, or the abuse failures including Rochdale and Rotherham, is the PCC approach the answer?

The question of the reform of the last bastion of unreconstructed public service is the right one but, back to the sticking plaster analogy – unless there is a fundamental reform of policing in this country, PCCs are irrelevant and the wrong answer.

The problems of the police service and the shape of reform are self-evident. These are:

• ineffective democratic accountability
• layers of bureaucracy
• mismanagement from the centre
• silo mentalities
• wasteful use of resources.

The shape of reform needs to address these problems – and PCCs, an idea which seems to have been thought of at a particularly-convivial dinner and scribbled on the back of a napkin – rather like the NHS reforms? – are not the answer.

There has to be recognition that the present confusion at the centre needs to be tackled by the creation of a proper national police service to deal with major crime and counter-terrorism, and that local policing is, essentially, a local government matter.

Local policing is a local service, such as education, social services or housing, with all of which it ought, intimately, to be connected.

If we as a country acknowledge the reality of a national police force to cover issues such as serious crime and counter-terrorism, we can then move forward to local police forces accountable to local authorities, with local police commanders sitting on local authority management boards and reporting to local authority members and chief executives in the same way as, say, directors of environmental services.

This will mean joined-up and accountable local services, but still with national standards – just as we have in education or social services.

It will mean the acknowledgement of reality in the creation of a national police force – more, rather than fewer local police forces, subject to local scrutiny; more effective use of resources, including back office services; wider career opportunities for the more able and strategic senior police officers; strengthened local government; and, crucially, a reconnection of the police with local communities.

It will, above all, restore a vital service to local government, from where it has been stolen by successive, centralising governments. It may come as news to some in central government, but local government overall has a first-class track record in value for money – certainly compared with the shambles central government makes of it.

Local government, with its additional strengths of oversight, scrutiny and strong local accountability, is the obvious place for local policing – the core of concern to the public.

Unless local government takes a strong stand for competencies, such as local policing, to be returned to it, it will risk losing more and more of its already-attenuated powers.

The think-tank, Reform, has already advocated PCCs being given more capability, citing the success of joint working in Glasgow and Warwickshire for its view – conveniently overlooking, in its advocacy of this dangerous and anti-democratic road, the key role of local government in both of these initiatives – and its ability to integrate across a much wider space than police and emergency services or, indeed, the wider criminal justice system Police culture, fundamentally, needs to be addressed by adopting a 'get out to get on' approach.

No police officer should be able to progress beyond, say, inspector, without a serious managerial stint outside the police. There should also be the real possibility of outsiders being appointed to senior police jobs beyond the current non-uniformed appointments.

And, back to the value-for-money issue, the present police terms and conditions regime must be examined.

But not all is gloom and doom, resulting in the drawing away of power to the centralised producer interests of the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Police Federation. Both the appointment of Tom Winsor – an ultimate outsider – as chief inspector of constabulary, and the situation in London, where the Metropolitan Police Authority has a clear,democratic link to the Greater London Authority, give real hope that a serious look will be taken at how Britain is policed, and the balance of accountability and operational independence.

John Smith is managing partner at John Smith Associates.