Opinion piece on police reform, by IOPC Director General Rachel Watson

(This article was first published in the Times online on 22 January 2026).

Reform to policing is coming — and it is badly needed, especially to the way we hold policing to account when things go wrong.

The system is letting down frontline officers and the public, but we now have a golden opportunity to ensure it is fit for the future.

The UK’s model of policing by consent is the best in the world and something we are rightly very proud of.

Public confidence in the police, and those who lead them, is right at the heart of this. Recent events highlight how fragile this confidence can be, and how damaging its loss can be for communities and the hard-working frontline officers who do their best to keep them safe.

As the police complaints watchdog, we play a vital role in holding the police to account and ensuring that cases with the most risk of eroding public confidence are properly scrutinised. It also means we are uniquely placed to see where that system is not working and which areas need urgent reform.

The anticipated police reform white paper signals the home secretary’s intent to deliver lasting change and provides an opportunity to address some of the fundamental flaws in the police accountability system.

The current system can deliver perverse outcomes, overly focused on junior officers rather than those responsible for the policies and systems in which they operate.

These officers have to deal with horrendous life or death situations where things can and do go wrong. When that happens, the focus is on them and whether they have acted in accordance with the standards of professional behaviour.

Our investigators have shared their frustrations about investigating junior officers who are doing their best in difficult situations. We are required to look at their actions in relation to police professional standards of behaviour and whether the threshold is met to start disciplinary proceedings.

It’s time to review the standards and that threshold for a misconduct investigation. Doing so will allow officers to uphold the law and keep the public safe.

There will always be those who behave badly, but those who try their best should not be alongside them in the misconduct system.

We also have multiple judicial and quasi-judicial processes examining the same incident, which can create delay and extraordinary levels of complexity. Criminal, coronial and disciplinary proceedings all serve important purposes but can, on occasion, come to contradictory conclusions based on the same evidence.

The most obvious example is in cases involving firearms officers, who can find themselves involved in proceedings years after they made a split-second decision. That isn’t right for them and it’s not right for bereaved families.

This multiplicity also creates confusion for the public and police, as well as being open to legal challenge at many levels. It should not take the Supreme Court to rule on what test of self- defence should apply to officers in disciplinary proceedings.

There is no doubt that the watchdog itself needs to speed up and I have started the most radical transformation programme since our inception. But we can’t achieve real change on our own.

We are committed to engaging with the comprehensive review into the barriers to timeliness in the police accountability system to which the government itself in 2024, to address the issues that cause unnecessary delays across the entire system.

We welcome the government’s establishment of the police leadership commission, which provides an opportunity for much-needed reform to chief constable recruitment. Sadly, and too often, we investigate senior leaders in policing only to uncover longstanding, but often unreported, concerns about their behaviour.

So we need to provide better protection for whistleblowers, particularly where a senior officer may be abusing their position, so they feel protected to speak out and listened to.

There also needs to be more independent oversight of the appointment process. The decision to replace police and crime commissioners provides an opportunity to review how these senior leaders are appointed.

We have been clear that radical reform is needed to make the accountability system more effective, fair and timely for everyone involved. The white paper presents the perfect opportunity for action.