Spinning around

POLICE forces in the UK are spending around £30 million a year on corporate communications, as budgets rose by 40 per cent between 2004 and 2009. The rise has coincided with an increased pressure from the government to improve the image of the police service, but has this rise in spending been good for policing and the public or could the money have been better spent elsewhere?

From the mid-19th century to the 1960s, the police received strong support from both the media and the general public, but rising crime, inner city riots and a series of scandals involving corruption, miscarriages of justice and sexism badly tarnished the service's image in the last two decades of the 20th century.

This decline in confidence in the police, coincided with an increase in the use of specialised corporate communications departments in the public sector throughout the 1990s. After Labour came to power in 1997, there was a big increase in spending on public relations across most, if not all, public bodies. In particular, police forces were under pressure to convince the public they were cutting crime.

Despite all the effort being put into raising public confidence, Home Office figures at the end of 2009 claimed just 46 per cent of the public believes the police are doing a good job. In March 2009, ministers ordered forces to raise that figure to 60 per cent by 2012.