Reid facing court battle over police mergers
Reid facing court battle over police mergers
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Wednesday, 31, May 2006 04:31
Home secretary John Reid is facing a court battle over the government's plans to merge a number of police forces after one of those affected called for a judicial review.
Cleveland police have started legal proceedings over plans to merge it with Durham and Northumbria forces – one of many mergers the Home Office wants to push through.
There are currently 43 police forces in England and Wales and the government wants to reduce this to as few as 12 forces.
Sean Price, Cleveland's chief constable, said that the merger plans will be extremely expensive and that the costings of the scheme had not yet been fully thought out.
"The people of my area don’t want to go into a superforce structure," he told BBC Radio 4.
He added: "There is still no idea of how much it is going to cost nor where the money is going to come from.
"We have to lose staff in order to make it happen and we can’t get any idea of what is going to happen to staff if they are not part of the new structures."
The chairman of Cleveland Police Authority, David McLuckie, echoed those views, insisting that a legal challenge was appropriate.
He told the same station: "Our challenge is around the fact that we feel that there hasn’t been enough [thought] given to the other options; that the process has been unfair and perverse; and that the speed at which this has been done is wrong.
"It is a political process but we don’t feel that that process has been followed properly."
Dr Reid, who has inherited the police force merger proposals from his predecessor at the Home Office, Charles Clarke, insists he has not yet made a final decision on the matter. 