The Greater Manchester Police, Fire and Crime Panel meets several times a year and is ‘responsible for holding Kate Green, the Deputy Mayor for Safer and Stronger Communities, to account on policing and fire rescue issues’
With 17 members in total – including 10 appointed councillors from each of the Greater Manchester local authority areas, the panel is consulted on police and fire plans and funding.
Supposedly, ‘the panel works to ensure that the actions and decisions made by the Deputy Mayor reflect public priorities’.
However, as we noted in January this year when £13.1 million in extra funding was given to the police in spite of strong public opposition, it’s clear that this panel serves the police’s interests in expanding its powers and reach.
NPMP members went to the panel to see what was discussed.
Election of a new chair
As the first panel meeting in this financial year, the panel had to appoint a chair. They did this within 30 seconds, electing Janet Emsley (Labour, Councillor for Rochdale). Janet wouldn’t even speak with residents when we went to the panel to voice our concerns in January, saying to members of the public: ‘I’d really rather you weren’t here today’. She flat-out refused our one page briefing on information about why GM shouldn’t be giving the police a £13 million increase in funding.
The panel then collectively agreed the notes from the last meeting, where there was no reference to our concerns being raised. It doesn’t seem like the panel in any way wants to represent views of residents who aren’t supportive of the police.
Progress Reports on the 2024-2029 Police and Crime Plan
The panel first discussed the Fire and Rescue Service Plan, and then went on to discuss the Police and Crime Plan. Deputy Mayor Kate Green gave a progress update on two of the ‘priorities’ for GMP that were outlined in this plan:
Priority 1 – ‘Improving Public Trust and Confidence in Policing’
Priority 2 – ‘Increasing Police Accessibility, Consistency, Responsiveness, and Outcomes’
Kate began by praising GMP as “the most improved police force in the country”, citing significant improvement in solved crime rates and more stop and searches and arrests being carried out.
But what does this actually mean when we look closer at GMP’s own reports?
In actual fact, the Priority 2 report shows solved outcome rates have remained static over the past 12 months, at 12.6%.
Between 2023 and 2024, Greater Manchester saw a 52% increase in the use of stop and search. We already know that Black and Asian people are disproportionately targeted by stop and search powers and are subject to more arrests, and this shows in GMP’s ironically named ‘Race Equality Report’.
In Greater Manchester, Black and Black heritage people are 2.4x more likely to be stopped and searched than White people, and Asian and Asian heritage people are 1.4x more likely. For arrests, Black and Black heritage people are 1.8x more likely to be arrested, and for Asian and Asian heritage people this figure is 0.8x, and this has risen from the previous year.
The Priority 1 report states 65% of public survey respondents had confidence they could get help from GMP in an emergency (this is only an increase of 3-4% from previous surveys). In addition, 46% had confidence in GMP in a non-emergency (compared to only 43% and 44% in previous surveys). Despite the positive spin, both of these statistics show the police are in no way trusted to deal with emergency situations or harm. We must explore alternative ways to invest in community safety and wellbeing.
The false promise of community consultation
During the discussion on ‘Improving Public Trust and Confidence in Policing’, major emphasis was placed upon “proactively going out and seeking what ethical issues people in Greater Manchester” would like the Independent Police Ethics Committee to consider.
Responding to a question on whether budget constraints would inhibit this process, Kate gleefully responded by stating that “GMP, [had] a budget of well over £800 million” and so this was unlikely.
This is incredibly ironic to discuss getting residents’ input, considering that the GMCA ignored the results of their own public consultation on whether the amount of council tax that goes towards the police should be increased in January. 67.6% of respondents said they didn’t support an increase in the police precept. Yet, the panel ignored this and went ahead and approved a £13.1 million increase in funding anyway.
According to Kate, GMP are “fairly open to when things go wrong”. Shockingly, she cited the following examples: the racist policing of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people (mostly children) at the Christmas markets last year, and Moss Side’s Caribbean Carnival.
But we know that in both of those cases, it was community organising that forced GMP and the GMCA to apologise. It was Kids of Colour, in collaboration with Liberty, who got GMP to stop sending discriminatory letters banning people from Carnival based on undisclosed and arbitrary criteria. And the charity Traveller Movement condemned GMP’s internal investigation of the Christmas markets as “inadequate” in April of this year, calling for an independent investigation.
Tellingly, the Deputy Chair of the panel Barbara Bentham (Labour, Councillor for Salford) made this statement on increasing trust in police using community consultation: “I think we need to recognise that there is gonna be a long-term problem with people who we need to re-educate and who have certain behaviours instilled in them”.
This incredibly concerning statement shows clearly that the GMCA panel aren’t interested in listening to the public about issues of policing at all, and instead are merely using public consultation as a front to propel police interests – a pretty rosy view of ‘public consultation’.
Key takeaways for community to be aware of:
Here’s a list of the key things discussed in both Progress Reports that will impact on future policing in Greater Manchester.
- The Baird Inquiry and Violence Against Women and Girls
The 2024 Baird Inquiry – an independent investigation into the experiences of women and girls in GMP custody – uncovered, in the words of Mayor Andy Burnham, “examples of extremely poor, indefensible and inhumane treatment” by GMP.
The Inquiry detailed evidence of unlawful arrests and detentions; inappropriate and traumatising strip searches, including of victims of sexual abuse; systemic failures in supporting people who are vulnerable, and deeper cultural issues within the force.
Yet again when there is a scandal, the police and the political institutions that support them promise us training will fix everything. The report on police trust that Kate Green presented in the meeting detailed that police have responded to the Baird Inquiry by making ‘improvements in training on domestic abuse and trauma informed practice.’
The harm they inflict every day will not be waved away with training, and the stats are clear that people don’t really trust the police to support them. And why would they?
When we look in particular at strip searches in GMP, approximately 12 strip searches were carried out per day between 2022 and 2023, and alarmingly, 431 children were strip searched between 2020 and 2025, with 136 being carried out in 2024 alone. Strip searches are dehumanising, violent, abusive and we must see an end to them.
Misconduct hearing outcomes often show that officers who harass and abuse their female colleagues — or target vulnerable women, including those who have come to the police to report sexual violence — are frequently given only final written warnings or allowed to resign before facing dismissal. For example, one Superintendent between October and December 2024 was given a ‘final written warning’ for ‘subjecting a female colleague to unwanted conduct of a sexual nature’.
This is in spite of Kate Green’s assertion during this panel that the Chief Constable Stephen Watson has a “zero-tolerance approach” to misconduct, and Deputy Chief Terry Wood’s emphasis on a “root out and boot out” approach, saying that he personally “suspends a lot of people”.
Kate Green claims that GMP have a ‘strong story to tell on gender-based violence’ but again, their own statistics show this simply isn’t true. There is no change in charged outcomes for domestic abuse, remaining at 10.3%. There are also no changes in charged outcomes for rape. For sexual offences, there’s actually been a 0.9% decrease in charged outcomes.
Misogyny and abuse are deeply embedded within policing, something that clearly cannot be altered with a few more dismissals or ‘special trainings’.
- Joint Enterprise
GMCA has developed its first iteration of a draft Framework for Joint Enterprise.
Joint enterprise is a racist law; Black people are 16 times more likely to be prosecuted under joint enterprise than white people. We need to see the end of Joint enterprise.
After years of campaigning from family and community members, Kids of Colour and JENGbA, especially on behalf of boys like those involved in the Manchester 10 case, the GMCA and Andy Burnham finally seem ready to acknowledge that the use of Joint Enterprise “is seen to have a disproportionate impact on young Black males”. Tellingly, however, it states in the Priority 1 report that this framework will “not create any routes for Mayoral intervention in ongoing investigations nor court proceedings”. It’s an incredibly shallow statement that will seemingly have no bearing on the many boys and young men who are sitting in prison or currently being trialled in specially designed ‘super-courts’.
We must keep a collective eye on this and remember that the devil is in the details. We need to see changes in outcomes, and justice for those convicted.
- Live Facial Recognition
GMP are preparing for the roll out of Live Facial Recognition technology through a national Home Office programme, and have been working closely with the much-disgraced Metropolitan Police in doing so.
The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, at the University of Cambridge has highlighted that facial recognition is unethical and there are concerns around racial bias. The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) highlighted that introducing this technology to Scottish policing would have highly detrimental effects on race equality, community-police relations and human rights.
There is no dedicated legislation in the UK on the use of facial recognition technologies.
In the EU, the European Parliament recently introduced rules heavily restricting the use of LFR through the Artificial Intelligence Act 2024 (AIA). The act prohibits the use of LFR in publicly accessible spaces for the purposes of law enforcement, unless such use is “strictly necessary” to search for specific suspects, missing persons, or victims of exploitation, or to prevent threats of terrorism or physical safety of people. In an open letter to the Prime Minister in August 2024, several human rights and civil liberties organisations suggested following the new restrictions introduced in the EU.
We know already that in London, the areas in which LFR has been rolled out are those which have primarily working-class and Global Majority populations. We can surely expect to see the same in Manchester.
- Police Pursuits
An insultingly brief mention was given to the issue of police pursuits in Manchester. The panel mentioned that there have “been public concerns about the conduct of our blue-light services in recent years”, but gave it no further attention. This is in spite of the campaign efforts of families working with the End Police Pursuits campaign, who have lost so many loved ones to reckless, unnecessary pursuits targeted at young, working-class Black people. The campaign continues to grow, the issues haven’t gone away, so look out for future events and actions to support the campaign.
- Attempts to diversify the police
The Priority 1 report stated GMP continues to experience challenges in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and particularly Black and Black heritage police officers. Only 9.04% of officers are Black or of Black heritage. Worryingly, the report outlined plans to ramp up recruitment efforts at football and cricket clubs and in schools and churches. We have written before about just how limited and flawed an intervention diversifying the police is.
- Safer Summer Town Centres Campaign
At the behest of the Home Office, GMP are implementing this summer a ‘safer town centre campaign’. This campaign centres on high-profile, visible town policing in our town centres, targeting so-called ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’, which often does little more than criminalise and harass people who are homeless, and those with addictions. It forms a part of wider efforts at ‘neighbourhood policing’, an iron fist in a velvet glove, with 176 more officers in neighbourhoods.
Conclusions:
The new normal for GMP is more of the same. As is clear to overpoliced people and communities, we need to see alternatives to policing. While people have been demanding and organising for this for decades, it’s not clear to communities and residents how the panel is accountable to people over the police. Only by building community power will we be able to care for our communities in Greater Manchester. This means learning more, supporting community alternatives to policing and resisting policing and the harms it creates.
To get involved in the fight, reach out via social media or email.
See you on the streets.
Further links.
Agenda for Greater Manchester Police, Fire and Crime Panel on Tuesday, 10th June, 2025, 3.00 pm