Improving licensing needs your support

Last month BASC received an email from a member alerting us to an “accountability and performance meeting” being live-streamed by the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Hertfordshire Constabulary. The purpose of the meeting was for PCC Jonathan Ash-Edwards to question Chief Constable Charlie Hall on the work of the force on some issues raised by the public. 

The BASC member had received an email from Hertfordshire Constabulary about the meeting and spotted that firearms licensing was on the agenda. During the meeting, the PCC introduced the topic, with the Chief Constable explaining that longer processing times for renewals had “driven quite a bit of public correspondence”. 

The Chief Constable said they had increased resourcing “by 50%” and were bringing in a “new case management IT system” — he was “optimistic” it would “improve some of the timeline issues”. BASC staff and several other meeting attendees have followed up with the PCC on what was discussed and the commitments made. 

You might be forgiven for cynically thinking that nothing will come of this, especially if your renewal comes under the combined firearms licensing unit for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, you have been issued a temporary certificate, and with no indication of when things will get sorted. 

BASC is encouraging improvements across many police forces, but it requires a lot of dialogue over a lengthy time period to secure and deliver commitments, and your support will help. Every police force in England and Wales has an elected person who has oversight of performance. Mostly these are PCCs. For Essex, Northamptonshire, North Yorkshire and Staffordshire police forces, the PCC is also responsible for local fire and rescue services and they are called police, fire and crime commissioners (PFCCs). In Greater London, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire, a mayor holds the responsibilities of a PCC. 

The public can raise issues with the appriopriate office and request their inclusion on the agenda of scrutiny meetings. Where such meetings are held in person, the public can attend and questions may be asked from the floor. Generally, the PCC, PFCC or mayor themselves can also be held to account by the public at Police and Crime Panel meetings. 

Let’s take Cumbria Police as a case in point (News, p9). That success did not come out of the blue. It was after two years of BASC engaging with the force and PCC office. This included the topic of firearms licensing being raised by BASC at a meeting of the Cumbria Police and Crime Panel. Emails from certificate holders to the PCC office really helped. They will listen if enough of us get involved. 

Momentum 

During the PCC and mayoral elections, several thousand BASC members used our campaign platform to contact candidates about firearms licensing. That included prospective PCCs in Cumbria. Prior to the elections we had support from deputy PCC Mike Johnson and Chief Constable Rob Carden, but a change in the PCC team post-election could have stalled momentum. 

However, the incoming PCC David Allen was well briefed, thanks to BASC members contacting him during his election campaign; he mentioned repeatedly receiving concerns about licensing delays. 

BASC is now following up with a training day for the Cumbria Police licensing department. We hope it will act as a pilot for the awareness training being developed by the British Shooting Sports Council (BSSC) for the new firearms enquiry officer training programme, to be rolled out by the College of Policing next year. 

There is a time and place for legal action and BASC has a Fighting Fund that is being used to good effect. However, collaboration is generally the key to success in lobbying for improvements in firearms licensing processes at force level. Cumbria is a great example of an effective campaign, and more are in the pipeline.