There has probably never been a more challenging time for policing leaders with a requirement to significantly drive out costs and pressure to protect front line services; two challenges from government that appear diametrically opposed to each other. When coupled with a vision from government that removes top-down targets and a desire to have more locally designed and led services is it any wonder that police services are concerned about the challenges facing them. ACPO estimates that 28,000 police jobs will go as a result of budget cuts over the next four years, 12,000 of them officers. So is this a time of risk or opportunity?

A number of police forces and many other public sector organisations including Local Authorities, Health Organisations and Fire & Rescue services have set about an organisational transformation that focuses on value-for- money service delivery around the needs of communities applying a counter-intuitive approach to the way they think about the design and management of the organisation. One of those police forces is Cheshire Constabulary and an article written with the Deputy Chief Constable Graeme Gerrard by Simon Caulkin (Simon wrote a weekly management column at the Observer for 16 years, from 1993 to June 2009) that starts to talk about their journey of discovery and opportunity. Click here for article

On a recent visit to Cheshire by Nick Herbert; Minister of State for Policing and Criminal Justice couldn't help but be encouraged by what he saw at the front-line: officers actively understanding what mattered to their communities, starting to use their discretion to make sensible decisions and leaders focused on removing the obstacles that got in their way.

In order to discuss and explore this opportunity further and learn more about the implications of a community focused design, Cheshire Constabulary and Vanguard Consulting invite you to join us and the Policing Minister Nick Herbert on the 13th September 2011 at Birmingham Council House. The day will provide the opportunity to hear from the Policing Minister, Cheshire Constabulary and other public sector senior leaders about the significant and practical opportunities for improvement; both service and cost by taking this counter-intuitive approach to the service design

• Policing in Austerity: A summary of POLICING IN AUSTERITY, a Vanguard event, Birmingham (13 September 2011) compiled by Simon Caulkin