Graham

Quoting Michael Howard from the original link:

"The commissioner will have the powers which existing police authorities have," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme'

Quoting from your quote above:

"The Chief Constable of Humberside Police is accountable to the Police Authority for the performance of the force, although the force itself is under his direction and control. He has 'operational independence', which means neither the Home Secretary nor the Police Authority can instruct him as to how he should carry out policing duties.

"He must, however, 'have regard to' the Police Authority's local Policing Plan and carry out other duties required by legislation and/or the Home Secretary." (My emphasis)

So let's just follow the idea through for a moment:

1) The People elect an official to be their "voice" and express their views to the Chief Constable

2) The Chief Constable must "carry out duties required by legislation and/ or the Home Secretary"

3) The Chief Constable must only "have regard to" the views of the people and their elected representative.

4) But the elected representative, in order to get *re*-elected, is going to have to convince the public that he or she is doing a good job and getting their points across, but they can't if the Chief Constable decides that it goes against legislation or the wishes of the Home Secretary.

So we end up with an elected representative who can actually *acheive* nothing if it doesn't fit in with the existing structure of operations and is thus more or less a total waste of space unless they try to justify their position by attempting to raise some sort of media campaign/ public protest to force some sort of populist policy action through, implying that the Chief Constable isn't doing his job properly.

I can think of much better things to spend money on.