Partnership, continuing professional development and the police service of England and Wales: deconstructing the myth and raising the phoenix from the ashes

Abstract

Within the Police Service of England and Wales, there has been a great deal of activity in the area of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of Police Officers in the past 5 years. This has taken the form of official and independent reviews of police training and development, attempts to set up a new Police University through a partnership initiative, creation of a new Police Training Body, and sanctioning the organisation and supervision of Police CPD by a non-Home Office public body. Despite all of this, the authors believe that the actual CPD of Police Officers has been detrimentally affected by this activity. The whole issue of training and development within the Service has been used as a ‘political football’, in effect, to cheapen the provision of CPD, and destroy the statutory partnership bodies set up to oversee and improve Police training and development. The aim of the work reported here is not only to highlight how the issue of CPD has been hijacked to the detriment of the Service, but also to create a new model based on the concept of partnership that will take the Police Service forward into the twenty-first century