Sir, Tony Travers’s article (“With Blair gone, this is the right moment to shake up our policing”, Oct 3) hits the nail on the head but also misses a vital point. More than 1,000 councillors from all the political parties have written to the Home Secretary to express their concern about the proposals to alter police authority membership by introducing directly elected crime and policing representatives.

Introducing this competing mandate will make it more difficult for the public to understand who is actually responsible for policing. The greatest disadvantage with any directly elected option, either at force or local level, is that people end up with two elected bodies operating with potential conflicting crime issues at the top of their agenda.

If we are to hold the police to account effectively, then any system needs to ensure that they are anchored in the community they serve. Through councils, there are existing structures that already meet the criteria for enabling local people to hold the police to account.

Council leaders are elected to put people first, and regardless of which services they are using, seeking help or redress, their first point of contact for local people must be their council. After Sir Ian Blair’s departure, the current proposals in the policing Green Paper need to be studied more than ever with a fine-tooth comb.

Councillor Margaret Eaton

Chairman of the Local Government Association

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