This thesis examines changes in the professional status of chief constables following the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. It explores factors that legitimise policing, provides a historical overview and traces the evolution of the chief constable role. Since the early nineteenth century, policing has become increasingly centralised in response to social and technological shifts. However, this trend was checked by the 2011 Act, which introduced local democratic oversight of chief constables and reduced the Home Office’s involvement in everyday police governance. This research considers how changes in the operating context and concepts of democratic policing have affected the disposition, role and status of chief constables.

The study uses thirty-seven interviews with chief constables, PCCs, and HMIs, a survey of chief officers eligible to become chief constables, document analysis, and an examination of the careers of 302 chief constables from 1995 to 2022. I found that the status and influence of chief constables have shifted since 2011. Legitimacy may have been enhanced through local democratic controls but at the risk of compromising police operational independence. Additionally, the 2011 reforms changed the composition of chief constables and their teams, creating more provincial than cosmopolitan executive groups (Reiner 1991: 80) and contributing to a sustained reduction in the average tenure of chief constables. This change is attributed to the removal of the national shortlisting process and the appointment of chief constables by PCCs. The thesis argues the 2011 Act’s reinforcement of the 1974 organisational structures has constrained the police’s ability to adapt to contemporary law enforcement challenges. Structural rigidity prompted legitimacy-maintaining responses, including national collaborations and alternative law enforcement entities outside the police institution. The ‘new localism’ of the 2011 Act may, thus, represent a temporary break from the centralising trend in policing, one that could be reversed by the need for effective and transparent responses to twenty-first- century crime necessitating less geographically constrained approaches.