[Paul Ansell]

I have read in several places that police and crime commissioners may choose to 'passport' funding to community safety partnerships. Can anyone explain what passporting is please?

I'm not posting this message to express righteous outrage at what may be an unnecessary neologism. I genuinely need to know!

Paul Ansell

[Claire Lee]

Hi Paul,
I have also heard this in relation to community safety grants which will be transferred to the control of the PCC from next year. We were told that, although the future use of these grants is uncertain (as will depend on priorities of the PCC and how they choose to use them), a number of prospective candidates had indicated that they would 'passport' them to local community safety partnerships in the first year.

I assumed this meant they would just pass on the grants to the community safety partnerships to use in line with current arrangements, rather than the PCC making immediate decisions about how they want to use them and potentially changing/reducing/cutting funding streams to local partnerships in 2013/14. I took this to be because the PCCs would be new in post they would not have had time to look sufficiently at how they want to use the grants, and may want to give a longer lead in time for any changes rather than destabilising existing services funded by the grants.

However, I could well be wrong and I'm sure there is a more technical explanation of passporting which someone can enlighten us about!

[Ed Hammond]

Passporting is indeed when money is essentially passed through an intermediary between a grant-giver and the ultimate recipient of funds. It connotes an essentially automatic process by which the intermediary doesn't really direct, or have any influence over, the way the money is spent.

So, describing funds for community safety as being "passported" through the PCC is not really correct (and if you've got this word from something we've written, let me know where it is, because it's probably misleading!) In fact the PCC will have significant power to direct where community safety money goes, and this could be a sticking-point in the relationship between PCCs, CSPs and the wider alphabet soup of related organisations with an interest in these issues. The PCC will want to exert significant control over where cash goes and has, effectively, carte blanche to decide where it goes, further to the Police and Crime Plan, which the Panel will have an opportunity to investigate.

I think that this will apply in Year 1 - PCCs will want to set out their stall early and I can't see many opting to continue the status quo until they are nearly halfway through their electoral term. That said, where the PCC is a former local government type from the area he or she may be inclined to keep things as they are because they had a role in agreeing those arrangements in the first place. It's difficult to say.

[Paul Ansell]

Thank you Ed and Claire for your contributions.