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UK: Disaster limitation: the police authoritythe ChiefConstable and the legacy of Hillsborough (feature)

01 January 1999

When Norman Bettison was appointed Merseyside's new Chief Constable in October it set in motion one of the decade's most acrimonious controversies over the politics of policing. Although an Assistant Chief Constable with the West Yorkshire Police, most of his career had been with the South Yorkshire Police, the force heavily condemned by Lord Justice Taylor's Home Office inquiry for their part in the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster. Many of the 96 who died in the tragedy, for which the force admitted liability in negligence, were from Merseyside.

At the time Bettison was a Chief Inspector, promoted soon after the disaster to Superintendent. Although not on duty at the fateful match it transpired that he was significantly involved in the events which followed. Yet members of the Police Authority Appointments Committee claimed no knowledge of Bettison's association with Hillsborough or his role in the aftermath. What became known as the "Bettison Affair" raised two serious issues: first, concerning the competence of Police Authorities in appointing Chief Constables; second, about Bettison's role after Hillsborough.

The Autonomy of Chief Constables

The relationship between British police forces and local government has a controversial and ambiguous history dating back to the development of local policing in the mid-nineteenth century. In theory, police forces operate outside central government direction, politically accountable to local government police authorities. The 1994 Police and Magistrates Act changed the composition of police authorities from one third appointed magistrates and two thirds elected councillors to 8 local councillors, 5 "local" appointed members and 3 magistrates. The Metropolitan Police Authority, responsible for Britain's largest force, is appointed by the Home Secretary.

Nearly forty years ago the 1964 Police Act gave police authorities one of local government's briefest remits: to maintain an adequate and efficient police force. The 1994 Act obliges police authorities, in consultation with their Chief Constables, to produce an annual policing plan incorporating crime control targets, force objectives and projected expenditure. Central government's role is confined to establishing national objectives, publishing performance tables and issuing codes of practice. Maintenance of standards and external moderation is left to an enhanced, centralised constabulary inspectorate.

While appearing to strengthen the political accountability of the police, these changes barely touch the power and influence of chief constables and the central, defining role of ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). The 1962 Royal Commission on the Police, precursor to the 1964 Act, noted that chief constables were "accountable to no-one" for their policies, priorities and resource allocation. "The problem of controlling the police", concluded the Commission "can be restated as the problem of controlling chief constables".

In 1968 Lord Denning sealed the political autonomy of chief constables when he ruled that neither the Home Secretary nor police authorities could direct them in enforcing the law: "The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him (chief constable). He is answerable to the law and the law alone." Effectively, Denning underwrote the constitutional and legal operational autonomy of chief constables. Throughout the inner-city uprisings, the coal dispute and other public order conflicts of the 1980s chief constables overtly consolidated their operational independence, occasionally declining to pay even lip-service to police authorities.

Unlike other senior executive local government officers, Chief Constables become immensely powerful in setting operational policies, establishing professional, even personal, priorities and developing strategic practices. Directing their senior management teams, in constant consultation with ACPO, they use their immense discretion to set the policing agenda<