Police need policing on firearm licensing 

During last year’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) and mayoral elections, several thousand BASC members used our campaign platform to contact candidates about firearms licensing. That resulted in positive commitments from many PCCs to improve things, which BASC has been following up. 

Last year Cumbria Police cleared its backlog, West Mercia Police made significant improvements in service, and Gloucestershire Constabulary began recruiting more firearms licensing staff to reduce delays. The support of the various PCCs in instigating these improvements has been key and there is more good news in the pipeline. It is slow but steady progress. 

When I previously wrote about PCCs, Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners (PFCC) and mayors having oversight of police performance, I focused on the efforts of Hertfordshire PCC Jonathan Ash-Edwards (Improving licensing needs your help, 21 August). 

In July last year PCC Ash-Edwards live-streamed an accountability and performance meeting with the then Chief Constable Charlie Hall. To recap, the PCC challenged the Chief Constable on lengthy delays in processing times for renewals, which had “driven quite a bit of public correspondence”. The Chief Constable said they had increased resourcing “by 50%” and were bringing in a “new case-management IT system”. He was “optimistic” that this would “improve some of the timeline issues”. 

However, the Chief Constable also said that, as of June 2024, renewals were being processed within 55 days on average and new grants within 128 days. We don’t know how those figures were calculated but it caused a lot of frustration for members, some of whom had been waiting for six months and longer for non-complex renewals. The PCC received more emails from certificate holders. 

The Chief Constable announced his retirement in September and his successor Andy Prophet was appointed in January. During this time, the PCC continued to receive complaints about lengthy renewal delays and lack of communications. So for the new Chief Constable’s first accountability and performance meeting with the PCC, held on 20 February, firearms licensing was high on the agenda. 

At February’s meeting the new Chief Constable admitted there were issues and he said plans were now in place to improve the service. He revealed there was a combined firearms licensing unit covering 30,000 certificate holders in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire; some 10,000 of these were in Hertfordshire. 

As of 12 February, there were 1,061 renewals and 549 new applications on the waiting list in Hertfordshire, which was “not acceptable”. Average waiting times were 244 days for renewals and 324 days for new applications, which were “far too long”. 

In terms of solutions, they are looking at greater efficiencies in the various suitability checks on applicants and had moved 11 staff from Hertfordshire into the combined licensing unit to help improve service. Also, there had only been two decision-makers from 39 staff in the combined unit, creating a bottleneck, and this is being sorted out. 

Communications 

Weekly accountability meetings are taking place and the recent increase in fees will be spent on improving the service. Communications with applicants will be improved; the force will move away from issuing temporary certificates; and it will take an estimated six to nine months to get through the backlogs. 

We thank PCC Jonathan Ash-Edwards for his continued interest in our concerns and we are encouraged by the action being taken by Chief Constable Prophet. It’s no small thing to contact the police with a complaint so if things do improve as promised, the 10,000 certificate holders in Hertfordshire owe a debt of gratitude to the few prepared to put their heads above the parapet. Whether Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire forces are also contributing more resources to the combined unit is less clear and we will be following this up. 

Meanwhile, BASC continues to keep the pressure on other police forces to ring-fence firearms licensing fees and make service improvements. You can help by contacting your PCC or MP