Not too sure about this one.



Thousands of police officers could be freed from administrative duties and be returned to the beat if there was more use of the private sector, the country's leading business group has argued.

The CBI said 4,000 policemen and women in custody services alone could work in the community if private firms were hired to undertake specialist jobs.

Reforms to back office roles and greater use of "innovative" techniques could free up resources, said a report.

Police forces were urged to undertake reviews of which jobs required uniformed officers rather than civilian staff.

Dr Neil Bentley, CBI director of public services, said: "Just like other public services, the expectations people have of the police are continually rising.

"They want a more visible street presence and a more responsive service. Outside providers of back office functions can free up the time of highly trained police officers, which means more bobbies on the beat and fewer shackled to the station dealing with time-consuming, routine tasks.

"Civilianisation of services such as custody management and prisoner escort aren't a threat to jobs but rather an opportunity for police officers to focus on what they signed up to do - fight crime and make our communities safer."

Its hardly news is it? the police service has been doing this for years

Exactly, and I would say the results have been mixed, at best.

True!

I'm all for it if it works properly. I mean which one of us wouldn't want a civvie doing our paperwork

We have civvies over here that do some of our paperwork and the now recent trial is having civvies working in the Watchhouse.

Will be interesting to see how it all works. There are also calls over here to hire more civvies to do our paperwork so we can get out onto the beat.