WOULD it matter if Lancashire Constabulary was abolished, merged into a North West Police Service, or even into a single National Police Force?

That’s one of the questions raised in an important report published this week by the Independent Police Commission chaired by Lord Stevens, formerly head of the Metropolitan Police Service.

The 43 police forces in England and Wales today were created in the 1960s and they vary greatly in size. Lancashire is the 11th biggest, with 544 officers in the East Lancashire division alone, compared, for instance, with 919 in the whole of Warwickshire force.

With so much more travel to work, study, leisure — and crime — these boundaries no longer make sense.

However, the last time a reorganisation was tried, a few years ago, the exercise collapsed. The proposed Lancashire/ Cumbria merger was one of the few agreed plans — and even that did not happen.

The anxiety then, as now, was that key policing decisions on day-to-day matters — in neighbourhoods, in our towns, and villages — would become even more distant, with the North West force’s HQ in somewhere like Warrington.

The Stevens’ commission has found a neat way of squaring the circle between larger, more efficient, regional forces and the need for greater local control too.

The commission proposes that, for example, in East Lancashire, the borough councils should have a much greater input into local neighbourhood policing.

There would be legislation to give these councils a say in the appointment of the ‘local commanders’ — the Chief Superintendents. These borough councils would also have a portion of the police council tax levy to spend on neighbourhood policing.

Before the changes in the 1960s, Blackburn, and Burnley each had their own borough police forces, run directly by their councils. We can’t turn the clock back that far, but these proposals would make a big difference – and facilitate the regionalisation of other functions, like training, HR, major crime and terrorism into regional forces.