On 14 June 2013 the Independent Police Complaints Commission published a report making national recommendations for firearms licensing following its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fatal shootings in Durham on New Year's Day 2012 by shotgun and firearm certificate holder Michael Atherton. The investigation concluded that Durham Police Constabulary had missed several opportunities to review and reassess Mr Atherton's suitability as a certificate holder.
The IPCC report goes on to make national recommendations for shotgun and firearm certificate holders to be subject to a more regular review of their suitability and personal circumstances, rather than simply every five years when certificates fall due for renewal. The proposal is that all certificate holders would be subject to this closer scrutiny, regardless of whether any particular incident or concern about an individual has been brought to the attention of their local firearms licensing department.
The IPCC recommendations include a suggestion for national guidance to be produced for police forces in relation to how they conduct and process reviews of certificate holders. This would certainly have the benefit of producing more consistency of approach across the country as well as greater clarity for certificate holders and indeed members of the public.
The IPCC argues that a minimum requirement of any certificate holder review should be for the individual to be subject to a further home visit and interview by the local firearms enquiry officer. This would seem to be an eminently sensible approach and should help to minimise the number of instances of revocation and refusal decisions being taken by the police without first inviting the certificate holder to offer any explanation or response to the police concerns.
These are no doubt all quite laudable recommendations, but one wonders how police firearms licensing departments would manage to implement them in practice, given they are already struggling in the wake of redundancies and/or mergers of the licensing departments of two adjoining police forces to simply process new certificate applications and five yearly reviews on renewal!
