Peel Centre

Stephen Greenhalgh (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I will take the question in two parts. I understand the opportunity, which is that this is an important regeneration site for Barnet and people in Hendon, but the Metropolitan Police Service has a requirement for a world-class training facility and with more effective use of land there is an opportunity to have a win-win, as I understand it. There is an opportunity for something that will invigorate that part of Hendon, with jobs, homes, as well as businesses, as well as a world-class training facility, but on a smaller footprint, is the vision. I think that is to be applauded as an objective.

The second point, I think it is a good question about, do we have the capability within MOPAC? I think, no, we do need to have help, both within the wider GLA family, as well as with the property professionals, when you are working on something as fundamental as master-planning a part of London. I know that I have been in discussions myself, brought together by the Deputy Mayor for Housing, Land and Property [Richard Blakeway], and I have also had conversations with the Deputy Mayor for Business and Enterprise [Kit Malthouse]. There are in place ways in which you can work with particular partners around a framework contract to be able to do development and work out who we can involve to ensure we maximise that opportunity and deliver those jobs and homes, but also ensure that the Metropolitan Police Service has its operational requirements for Hendon. We look beyond the boundaries of MOPAC, in answer to your question, to do that.

Caroline Pidgeon (Deputy Chair): What about the point about -- have you looked at potentially sharing with other forces and what can be learned from other facilities such as Gravesend?

Stephen Greenhalgh (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I have not been to Gravesend yet. I have heard that it is not well used as well, and it is a private finance initiative (PFI) contract and that does cost the Metropolitan Police Service. That issue has been raised and I will go and visit it. I have also been - within the short three and a bit months, or is it four months now, in post - I have been to the national police training facility, the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) facility, I cannot remember exactly where it was, but it was lovely. I guess that we need to have a view about what the police services across the country will use. All too often people say, 'We can create a national facility and we can share facilities, and open the doors to the world and no one walks through them', so I look to the service to guide us on what the vision and ambition should be in terms of training. Certainly my understanding is that there is an opportunity to provide the world-class facilities that the Metropolitan Police Service needs, but also regenerate that part of London. I am driven by what perhaps the Deputy Commissioner has to say on that.

Craig Mackey (Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police): You raise an interesting point. I think what we are trying to do is not build a business case that is based on earnings from the thing, because I think, as the Deputy Mayor highlighted, all too often you have probably had a business case presented where we say, 'Do not worry, the books will balance, because we will get hundreds of people coming in'. On volume, it is probably unlikely that other forces would come in. For the basic training of officers and those sorts of things, given that probably - and some Members who were MPA members will probably remember - about 10 or 15 years ago the regional training structure in the UK was dismantled and forces were required to train locally, that was about the ability of officers to engage with local communities that they were going to work in and they were going to police. I think at that end there is probably - if I am realistic - limited opportunity for income.

Where there is a real opportunity is around things like the Crime Academy and some of our specialist areas of training. The Metropolitan Police Service quite obviously has a national and international reputation around those and what this does for the estate is actually bring those facilities up to the very best in the country. Certainly there would be national and international opportunities, but I am always a bit cautious and maybe have been around the block too many times to worry when people say, 'I will get you lots of money from this particular facility and we will be able to sell stuff from it'. I think there will be an income stream but I would not like to say to you, 'It will be X and it will offset this amount of revenue'.

Caroline Pidgeon (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

Joanne McCartney (Chair): Thank you. Before I bring James in, could I just ask, I am aware that, because it is such a large site, there is now a local campaign to try and retain some of the green space and the playing fields there. Are you engaging with the local community?

Craig Mackey (Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police): We are. I did not know about that particular campaign.

Stephen Greenhalgh (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): The answer is that we are just engaging in the early stages of consulting on some of the ideas, and of course any successful place-shaping or regeneration requires intensive negotiation with the people that live in the area. That will be ongoing and take months, if not years in some cases, but that is an essential part of getting things right.

Joanne McCartney (Chair): So you will engage with those local community groups while that is going on?

Stephen Greenhalgh (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Absolutely.

Joanne McCartney (Chair): Lovely, wonderful. James.

James Cleverly (AM): In the United States of America, it is completely common for initial police training to be delivered through community colleges. Ironically enough, and I had no idea the topic was coming up, but I was having a conversation with the principal of a community college in London, just talking through the practicalities of delivering public service training, emergency service training, through community colleges, and the feedback I had was very positive. May there be an opportunity for us to make a huge overhead saving by delivering large chunks of the curriculum through the pre-existing structure of community colleges, with the additional benefit of having probably much better opportunities to get certainly ethnic diversity into the recruitment pool, and then concentrate in-house on doing the bits of specialist technical training that could not practically be delivered through what is a civilian non-policing college?

Craig Mackey (Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police): You are absolutely describing the model that everyone is moving to.

James Cleverly (AM): I will still claim credit for it.

Craig Mackey (Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police): You can claim credit for that one, but the current way it works, if you want to be a constable in the Metropolitan Police Service - as Members will be aware - you come in as either a Police Community Support Officer, or a member of the Metropolitan Police Service Special Constabulary, and we have just opened up a graduate recruitment stream as well. So that is how you come in. People do something called a Police Learning Certificate. We provide that. What will happen during next year, and as part of the wider reform that has been going on around police terms and conditions and all that, and the way we work training a recruit, is we will move, only the initials will change, to a Police Knowledge Certificate, which we hope will be delivered by local community colleges, colleges across London, and it is a real opportunity, having spoken to a college principal quite recently about it. If you like, that hard area of knowledge about law and those sorts of things would be delivered in a classroom environment.

The application would then be delivered in the Metropolitan Police Service. For instance, you know what the offence of burglary is, what does it look like, how do we prevent it, how do we investigate it? So that model is coming forward.

Joanne McCartney (Chair): We are now going to move to talk about the Metropolitan Police Service's employee vetting scheme, and, Roger, you are going to lead us on this.