The Police Federation of England and Wales represents approximately 130,000 officers up to the rank of chief inspector. It is the closest equivalent to a trade union that police officers — who are prohibited from joining unions or taking strike action — are permitted to have. Since an external review published in 2014 found significant governance failures, reform has been a recurring theme. Progress has been uneven.
What the 2014 Review Found
The independent review led by Sir David Normington concluded that the Federation had “systemic” problems with governance, finances, and culture. It found that branches held substantial sums of money in accounts that were not subject to central audit, that governance arrangements varied significantly between the 43 branch federations, and that the national body lacked effective mechanisms for ensuring accountability.
Normington made 36 recommendations. The Federation accepted them and published an action plan. A follow-up review in 2017 found that many structural recommendations had been implemented, but identified continuing concerns about the pace of cultural change and transparency on finances.
Current Concerns Inside the Federation
Surveys of Federation members conducted by the Police Foundation and by academic researchers at Canterbury Christ Church University between 2023 and 2025 indicate that confidence in the Federation’s national leadership has not fully recovered. Around 40% of surveyed members said they did not believe the Federation adequately represented the interests of rank-and-file officers, as distinct from institutional interests.
Specific concerns reported by members include: the handling of welfare cases for officers facing misconduct allegations; communications around pay negotiations; and the Federation’s public positioning on matters such as use of force legislation and the duty of candour. On the latter issue — a statutory obligation for officers to cooperate fully with investigations into their own conduct — the Federation has lobbied against the form proposed by reformers, a position that critics say conflicts with the interests of officers who are victims of institutional cover-ups.
The Governance Structure
The Federation operates under the Police Federation Regulations 1969, as amended. Its governance includes a National Board, a National Chair and General Secretary, and 43 branch boards. The national body has limited financial control over branches, which retain their own accounts and employ their own staff. This structure was identified as a vulnerability in 2014 and remains partially unreformed.
The Federation’s finances are funded by member subscriptions — currently £22.83 per month for a constable. The national body’s accounts are published and audited; branch accounts are published separately but vary in the granularity of disclosure. FOI requests submitted to the Federation have been refused on the basis that it is not a public authority, a classification that itself has been challenged in legal correspondence without definitive resolution.
What Officers Are Calling For
Reform proposals circulating within the Federation and discussed at its 2025 annual conference include: mandatory national audit standards for all branch accounts; an independent oversight board with external members; separation of the Federation’s member welfare function from its lobbying function; and a revised election process for the national chair designed to reduce entrenchment.
There is also a strand of opinion that structural reform is secondary to cultural change — specifically, a shift away from what critics describe as a default defensive posture toward individual members facing misconduct allegations, and toward a more active role in supporting officers who report colleagues’ wrongdoing. Officers who have made protected disclosures about colleagues’ conduct have described the Federation as unhelpful or actively hostile in a small number of documented cases.
The Home Office Position
The Home Office retains power to amend the Police Federation Regulations. Ministers have periodically indicated willingness to intervene if the Federation does not reform itself. Since 2017, the intervention that was implied has not materialised. The Federation has used the threat of regulation to accelerate some internal reforms while resisting others.
The Police Foundation’s 2025 report on police workforce reform recommended that the Home Office commission an independent external review of the Federation’s progress against the 2014 Normington recommendations — effectively a third external assessment. The government has not formally responded to this recommendation.