Review urges England's 39 police forces be slashed to as few as nine

Lord Hogan-Howe finished the review in September and sent it straight to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, according to the Guardian. It will be published before Christmas, with a white paper following in the new year. Multiple sources say the shape under discussion is nine regional forces for England plus a single force for Wales, sitting above more than 150 local policing units that would keep handling neighbourhood crime-fighting.

The scale is the point. England has 39 forces, and England and Wales together run 43, each with its own police and crime commissioner. Hogan-Howe's report doesn't nail one number: sources say it offers a range of nine to 18 larger forces. None of the new outfits would be bigger than the Met, which polices 9 million people in London.

Above the regional forces would sit a new National Police Service, the government's intended home for counter-terrorism and serious organised crime. An advert for a commissioner to run it is expected early in the new year. The bigger forces would take on murders, serious sexual violence and public order, and absorb the back-office work — HR among it — that all 43 forces currently duplicate. Hogan-Howe has argued the current model is too sluggish and hands crime victims a postcode lottery, and he publicly backed a nine-force map 12 years ago.

Not everyone is saluting. Doubts are growing among chief constables, and the Guardian reports some are irritated by a Met-organised event on Friday at No 10 North in Manchester, titled 'The cost of standing still is that criminals will win'. Met commissioner Mark Rowley and chiefs including Greater Manchester's Stephen Watson will press for a deep cut in force numbers there, and Rowley is due to meet Burnham afterwards. Other chief constables told the Guardian they are sceptical or flatly opposed.

The hold-up traces back to Burnham's devolution agenda and his drive to rewire the British state and add more mayors. Some new forces would answer to mayors; others would have mayors covering only part, or none, of their patch. One police source warned the mayor-alignment route could produce 20 or more forces — 'not a radical enough change.' Theresa May-era PCCs are also slated for abolition under the plans.

Critics aren't shy. Kent's Conservative police and crime commissioner Matthew Scott said the overhaul would 'spend a great deal of time tearing up the fabric of policing for a suboptimal outcome'. One chief constable told the Guardian everyone knows 43 forces have to go, but the return on investment could take five or six years; another worried a super force covering a vast area would leave them knowing nobody. Scotland and Northern Ireland already run single forces, and Hogan-Howe's review studied how national forces were set up there and in the Netherlands.