A planned merger of the Police and Crime Commissioner's (PCC) office with the mayoralty could end up costing more money than it saves, it has been claimed.

Earlier this year plans were revealed to scrap the office of the PCC, transferring the powers previously held by the position to the mayoral West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).

The proposals were first put forward by the government as part of the West Midlands' second devolution deal, and were due to be in place in time for the 2020 mayoral elections.

Supporters of the move say that combining the two offices would create a single point of accountability akin to the mayor's position in London, while others have suggested that it could save money.

However current PCC David Jamieson, who has announced plans to retire in 2020, has disputed both points.

West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson.
West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson.

And he claims that, far from saving money, the proposed merger could in fact cost more.

"They say saving money, but most of the people in this office are doing jobs they would be doing anyway," he said.

"So there’s a team that look after the victim’s fund. Well that comes from the Ministry of Justice, and we have to disperse that money to victim’s. That’s not going to change.

"We’ve got the partnership fund which, again, go to the seven authorities. That’s just under £4 million. This won’t change that. In fact we’ve made it more efficient by bringing it in house here.

"And then we’ve got the audit facility, so these people sit in our office but in fact they’re joint with the force. And there’d be no difference there either, because the force has got its own budget.

"Then we’ve got all the grants and those sorts of things that are given out. Things like the active citizens fund, which are needed. And then we’ve got other people who do other roles. So, the number of people that are just working for me is infinitesimal.

"And when you think about it, the deputy mayor who will look after policing, if this model goes ahead, would need to sit across all these people. They’d need to make sure all those people were active doing all those things.

"And there is a real danger that merging the roles would actually cost more. The mayor’s salary will have to go up and then there’ll be a well paid, unelected, deputy mayor for policing."

But Jamieson says that it's not just about money. One thing that concerns him with the proposals is that the mayor would choose a deputy mayor to look after policing who did not have the same powers as a directly elected official.

He also doubts whether the mayor would have the time within his current role to take on policing effectively.

"The problem you get with the mayoral model is you get breadth, but you get no depth," he said.

"What you’ve got with the PCC model is you’ve got quite narrow width, but a lof of depth, where we can do a lot of probing into various aspects of how the police works.

"What we can do is, if we’ve got concerns in an area, there is a lot of in depth work that we can do into it. So the questioning we can do is quite deep. That’s not happening in Manchester, from what I gather [who operate a similar system to what is being proposed for the West Midlands], so the question is ‘would the mayoral role be able to deal with that depth of work?’

"In theory it should be possible, but in practice it doesn’t seem to be happening, either in London or Manchester. It’s just not happening.

"Partly because, however good the quality of the person is who is deputy mayor, they don’t have the same authority as the directly elected person. And they’d be running the department on a day to day basis. And of course they can be replaced by the mayor at any time. And it doesn’t hold the same clout. The power to convene people as a directly elected politician is far, far greater.

"We’ve just had a conference here this morning to do with diversity, which was absolutely terrific, people have been saying one of the best things they’ve been to.

"Now, would the mayor be doing that? And whoever the mayor is, I’m not just talking about a Conservative mayor. I suspect not.

"I’m not opposed to going forward with discussions, but the good things that we’ve done here are looking at things in depth.

"Has a mayor got time to do that? And has an unelected deputy mayor got the authority to do it? And I just haven’t heard any convincing argument there.

"And of course then, we assume the deputy mayor would be paid a salary similar to the PCC, you’d have the mayor as well, so it could actually cost more."