‘It will be a better force’
Police, fire and crime commissioner Danielle Stone on her future plans, misogyny in the force and her surprise at what she found upon taking the job
By Sarah Ward
Danielle Stone had been in office for just over 100 days when our interview took place earlier this month. The first female and Labour politician to be elected as Northamptonshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner, she has made history, but has ambitions beyond that.
Well known in Northamptonshire - she has been a borough, county and is currently a unitary councillor - she has been active in council chambers for decades, but always in opposition, a vocal opponent of the cuts to services imposed during the Conservative austerity years.
Her new role is the first time she has had any kind of political power and she wants to use that new influence to bring about widespread change.
She tells me:
“I want to look at the drivers which are causing people’s problems and then I want to understand what the drivers for change will be.
“A lot of the narrative around young people is about preventing them from becoming criminals. I want to change that narrative, so that we all develop an understanding of how young people have needs that have not been met and that has made them vulnerable. For me that shift is really important, because it is about locating a problem and where it really lies. The problem does not really lie with families or the schools, or the young people. It lies in a system that has failed to meet their needs.”
Whether by accident or design, her focus seemingly dovetails with that of Keir Starmer’s new Labour government. In recent weeks home secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a £100m ‘young future’s unit which will invest money in youth hubs and call on public authorities to come together to tackle the growing epidemic of crime and mental health problems affecting many young people.
Cooper has spoken about how today’s teenagers (Generation Alpha) have it much harder than their immediate predecessors and Northamptonshire’s youth have felt that as keenly as anywhere in the country, perhaps even more so, as the former county council was one of the first in the late 2000s to remove its youth service provision.
With a background in teaching - she moved to the county in 2001 to run the study support scheme - the new commissioner has for several years run a youth club with her husband, helping many asylum seeking young people to settle into the county and to move into education and training.
She says:
“The disinvestment in Northamptonshire since then (2010) until now is £60m and that is the problem.
“That together with the closure of the Sure Start centres and the Extended schools programmes and the disinvestment of the voluntary programmes has made our young people extremely vulnerable.
“What I want to do is work with partners to go back. I want to make sure we are collectively meeting the needs of young people.
“I’m going to be convening a meeting in the autumn with all the decision makers. I think that’s what’s gone wrong. I think integrated working needs to be led from the top and so I want to arrange a meeting of all the CEOs in the local authorities and health bodies, so that we can have that proper strategic decision making.
“I have worked with young people all my life and I have never known young people so distressed, ever. We need to understand their needs and the best people to tell us are the young people themselves so we need to do a lot of work.
“I think it is in everybody’s interests for public services to work - so that needs looking at. That means the local leaders working with the government to make sure public services function the way they are supposed to do. I’m sure the government is going to be building new initiatives with new money.”
As the chancellor Rachel Reeves has made clear, new money may be thin on the ground, but in order to make change, the government will have to come up with the cash to fund some new schemes.
The commissioner wants to see two new youth hubs in the county.
She says:
“I have no idea if we are going to be able to do this, but my vision would be that we have a youth hub for the North and one for the West. It is much more than a glorified youth centre. It’s a place where they can go to feel safe, where they can go for support and advice, it’s where they can drop in, where they can volunteer and find leisure, recreation and education facilities.
“It would be revolutionary to have hubs like that in Northamptonshire.”
In her plans, there would also be smaller hubs across the county which would link into the larger centres. In order to get there she realises there needs to be a new emphasis on training professionals - the lack of investment in youth services in the past decade has meant the county’s university no longer offers a youth work qualification.
She says:
“An awful lot of youth provision is led by volunteers, which is fantastic, but it isn’t sufficient. So I want to ask the government for a whole new emphasis on the need for qualified youth workers and I want people to see that as a really valued profession.
“What happened with the demise of our youth services is we lost all our trained people.”
Visible policing, violence against women and modern slavery
Communities up and down the country have decried the lack of police officers walking the streets in recent years and as NN Journal reported back in October 2022, neighbourhood officers were being taken from their duties to fill gaps in response teams.
The former commissioner and the chief constable had made big statements about visible community policing, but this did not materialise.
Danielle Stone says on her watch it will. She has been out with interim chief constable Ivan Balhatchet to see the issues in Northampton town centre and is conducting a series of study tours around the county with senior officers so that they can come up with plans about how to put more officers back out walking the beat.
She says:
“We are going to return to visible and neighbourhood policing. It is happening. I want to have more police community support officers. That is what the communities are telling me and we will definitely be bringing more in.”
She will publish a public safety plan later this year, which will look different to what has gone before, pulling together fire and policing strategies. She says the priorities will be listed clearly on the website and will be backed up by action plans with progress markers alongside.
Alongside the focus on helping young people to avoid crime and prosper, will be a priority to address violence against women and girls.
This will be the remit of her deputy Marianne Kimani. Kimani’s appointment on the same day that she lost out on her hopes of becoming the Labour MP for Daventry, led to considerable criticism of Stone, particularly from the Conservative-dominated police, fire and crime panel, which expressed concerns about why the new commissioner had not mentioned during her campaign that she would appoint a deputy. The panel recommended against Kimani’s appointment, but Stone appointed her anyway.
In our interview she says the panel did not understand the nature of a political appointment and could not know what she needed to help her fulfil her role. Kimani will take a lead on the violence against women and girls while Stone will lead on the youth projects.
And another focus is modern day slavery, particularly in the adult social care profession.
She says:
“I have raised the issue so many times with the police since I became commissioner, as I am really worried about it. There is a national scandal about modern slavery being used to produce the labour for adult social care. So my question to everybody is - you’ve got a modern slavery policy. So how are you monitoring what is going on?
“My fear is that if we have a policy which is to do with outsourcing that means in the end the local authorities lose the capability of running their own services. It means they no longer have the HR, IT or financial architecture to run their own services, which means they become extremely vulnerable to the market.
“It means the market can set the price, which is why local councils overspend. With that strategy there is an acceptance that people are going to be making profit out of vulnerable people. The only way you can make profit is to squeeze the labour. So that’s what I’m worried about and what I’m asking people to have a look at.”
The force is currently rated as requiring improvement by inspectors, who have pointed to issues with crime investigation.
The new commissioner insists the force will be better when the inspectors show up next time.
She says:
“It will be a better force. I think the investment in communities and public service will benefit the force and take pressure off so they can do their substantive job of investigating crime properly.”
Turmoil
Danielle Stone has taken office at an unparalleled time of crisis in Northamptonshire’s police and fire services. Former chief constable Nick Adderley had a spectacular fall from grace after wearing fake Falklands War medals which subsequently sparked a public unravelling of his personal history and his dismissal this summer for dishonesty.
Her predecessor, Stephen Mold, also decided to stand down after derogatory comments he made about his female fire chief Nikki Watson. These events came after months of scandal which had started with the former commissioner’s appointment of his rumoured girlfriend to the role of chief fire fighter last July. Danielle Stone was among those who protested outside meetings calling for the commissioner to stand down, and she was critical of how he was doing things.
But since taking office she has not swept through with a new broom and has instead decided to stay with all Stephen Mold’s appointments.
She says:
“What’s really surprised me, is that the team in my office are extraordinary and I am amazed. I think they were bruised by what has gone on, but the work they are doing is extraordinary. Whether it is on victim support, or working with young people, or working with the justice system, handling complaints. They are people with amazing expertise and integrity and I’m amazed. I’m delighted.”
She is not so thrilled with the amount of time the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to decide whether Nick Adderley will face criminal charges.
“I regret how long that’s taking, because I do want to draw a line under it. I think we’ve got the most enormous job to do to make our communities safe and to bring back some sense of optimism in our young people.
“I don't want to be dragged backwards. The interim chief has put out a call for any officers who have any information that they want to share to be brave enough to come and do it and if anybody does we will then take up anything that comes out. We don't want Nick Adderley to get away with anything, but neither do I want people’s time and energy to be sucked into a vortex.
“I want us to be future looking.”
Misogyny has been at the centre of some of the scandals, and across the country’s police forces it is acknowledged that prejudice against women is still an issue in a male dominated service.
Commissioner Stone’s take is that under her leadership things will change.
She says:
“I’m a feminist and I know in order to achieve justice for women we need male allies. I inherited a really terrible situation where my office and the police and fire service came out with very scarred reputations, so one of the things I have also been amazed about is the senior men, in my office, in police and fire, in my judgement, are men with emotional intelligence.
“What we had before was leadership that was misogynist and couldn’t deliver. I think we’ve got a completely different situation now, where we have strong women in really important posts and in the senior men we’ve got around at the moment, we have men with emotional intelligence. I feel very fortunate.
“Misogyny is part of the air we breathe, so I’m not going to say we don't have any misogyny or racism but I think we are well placed to address issues arising from misogyny, racism and homophobia in a way we weren’t before.
“One of the joys in being in a leadership role is that you give permission for different things, so if you’re a misogynist leader you give permission for misogyny, if you’re somebody like me, you give permission for it to be called out.
“And I think that’s one of the joys of the job. It’s going to happen, but if it does it will get called out.”
It’s so refreshing to have a PFCC who understands what needs to change.
The Tories stripped away our youth services and the family support of the Sure Start centres and we are seeing the effects these cuts have had on young people and families.
Danielle whilst on the county council knew what the implications these cuts would have and could see the issues it would create further down the road and she was right.
Modern slavery is happening in our communities but is hidden so I’m glad she’s taking a lead on that.
Retail crime is growing at a rapid rate and again by speaking to retailers she understands the impact it’s having on them and by having more visible policing this will hopefully reduce.
I’m sure it’s a breathe of fresh air for the chief Constable and the office to have a commissioner that’s forward thinking and who by working with them will start to turn things around.
When I speak to women they, like Danielle says they do not feel safe once it starts to get dark. Violence on women and girls is increasing and it’s totally not acceptable.
Violence against anyone on any level isn’t acceptable.
The lives we have seen lost because of knife crime and road accidents is heartbreaking and again something that is on Danielle’s radar.
With Danielle, Marianne, the chiefs and CEO’s working together I’m confident we will see change.
The panel now needs shaking up. It’s as bad as under Mold, especially the chair.