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Recalibrating the Ecosystem: What Comes After PCCs?

Multi-agency criminal justice governance has always relied on a delicate (and complex) ecosystem of structures and relationships to hold it together.

For over a decade, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) have acted as the keystone species in this ecosystem. As a a local democratic anchor, they have shaped the environment around them, enabling partnerships to take root. Alongside PCCS, local government structures have offered relatively stable points of alignment for community safety, prevention, and wider system coordination. Albeit imperfect, the ecosystem had some semblance of balance.

Now, both are shifting.

The proposed abolition of PCCs and redistribution of their responsibilities alongside the ongoing council restructure do more than redraw organisational charts. They disturb the ecology of governance: the relationships, routines, and tacit agreements that partnerships rely on to function.

If you, like me, are now realising you are unclear what the tie is between abolition of PCCs, council restructures, and partnership governance – let me explain.

In 2028, at the end of the current electoral cycle, the functions of PCCs will be redistributed. Where there is a combined authority, those responsibilities are expected to sit within the Mayor’s office. We already see this in areas such as Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and London. In areas without mayors, responsibility will fall to elected council leaders.

At the same time, local government restructuring is moving towards larger, combined arrangements – creating bigger regional groupings through the merger of existing structures. This, in turn, creates the conditions for more combined authorities and potentially more mayoral governance (noting that combined authorities do not have to have a mayor; this remains contingent on local agreements with central government).

All of this change creates risk. But it also creates something rare: opportunity

The risk: recreating the same ecosystem in a different pond

We know some of the challenges which exist within current multi-agency governance: lots of layers; governance bloat; diffused accountability; governance fatigue.

Without deeper reflection, there is a risk that we are simply “lifting and shifting” the governance from PCCs to a different elected official. In some areas, the move to larger regional structures may mean creating the same ecosystem but in a bigger pond.

The opportunity: redesigning the ecosystem

Moments of structural disruption at this scale are rare. Multiple parts of the system shifting at one are rarer still.

This creates an opportunity to move beyond structure-led redesign, instead giving us an opportunity to ask more fundamental questions about how our governance actually functions.

Instead of asking “where should governance sit?” we have an opportunity to ask, “what does our governance actually need to do in this system?”. We have an opportunity to reconsider how decisions are made and owned; how coordination happens across the many organisations involved in multi-agency criminal justice governance; how accountability can be made visible and meaningful; I could go on and on.

As well as an opportunity to properly consider the aims of our multi-agency criminal justice governance for the first time in a decade, we have an opportunity to confront one of our biggest blind spots: the work sitting between the structures.

Effective partnerships do not function because governance exists. They function because there are people tending the ecosystem: connecting the systems, maintaining continuity, and translating between organisations. This work often sits just below the surface: largely invisible, rarely designed for, but critical to the stability of the system.

There is also the question of what do we want the system to evolve towards. For me, this points to a need for smarter governance, rather than simply bigger governance. This means moving away from strictly hierarchical models and towards approaches that better reflect how multi-agency systems operate – more distributed, relational, and agile.

It means recognising governance is a practice the requires skill: properly trained administrators and governance managers; capable chairs who understand how to hold space for collective decision-making; and participants who understand that they are more than just representatives – they are contributors.

We need to take this governance design seriously, with clear and purposeful artefacts – terms of reference, decision-making frameworks, performance measures – that are explicitly aligned to shared outcomes, data, and system priorities, rather than organisational boundaries.

In ecosystem terms (have you figured out yet that I love a metaphor?!), this is about being intentional in what we cultivate – not just what we construct.

This recalibration is not about reallocating roles, we have real opportunity to redesign the conditions in which the ecosystem operates – making visible the functions that sustain it, resourcing them properly, and shaping the governance around how the system actually works, rather than how we assume it should.

If we don’t, the risk is not just disruption. It’s that the system will quietly reform itself during transition from one agency to another – recreating the same patterns, at a different scale.

The ecosystem will settle. The question is whether we shape it – or simply inherit what it becomes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this – click into the post page to leave a comment!