Voters Oppose Police Mergers

Voters 'Opposed To Police Mergers' ran in The Guardian this weekend.

Didn't appear anywhere else though, which was a little surprising.

A majority of voters in areas of England and Wales, where the Government is proposing to merge police forces, are opposed to the controversial plans, according to a poll.

Some 58% of people surveyed for the Policy Exchange thinktank said that mergers should not go ahead, against 36% who supported them.

And opposition was strongest among those who knew most about the plans, with those who said they were aware of the mergers rejecting them by a margin of more than two to one (43% of the total against 20%).

A financial forecast drawn up for the Association of Chief Constables and leaked on Friday predicted that 25,000 police officers' jobs may have to be axed to meet the cost of restructuring.

The poll by Populus follows a Policy Exchange report, entitled Size Isn't Everything: Restructuring Policing in England and Wales, which argued that the planned mergers would prove unpopular and unworkable and that there was no evidence that larger forces are more effective.