The architect of police reforms in the North today warned he was ready to protest if the British Treasury does not deliver on a new £130 million recruit training college.
Lord Patten, whose commission drew up the blueprint for transforming the RUC, urged Gordon Brown to make financing a state-of-the-art academy a priority on becoming British prime minister.
As he returned to Belfast, the former Governor of Hong Kong spoke of the overhaul to the once staunchly Protestant force in the eight years since he delivered his dossier for change.
He praised the decision by Sinn Féin to finally endorse the rule of law in Northern Ireland, despite wishing republican support had come sooner.
But even though 140 of the 175 recommendations made by his commission in 1999 have been completed, uncertainty still plagues a replacement for the dilapidated Garnerville training facilities in East Belfast.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has pledged the British government will fund a replacement, to be built in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, and shared with the prison and fire services.
But with no financial rubber stamp, building work has yet to get started. And Lord Patten insisted that the college should have been one of the easiest of his recommendations to deliver.
He said: "I remember saying . . . since it requires support from the Treasury, we will be lucky if it's done in a decade. I hope it's done in a decade and a half.
"I just hope that the Treasury can be held to it now. It would be a very welcome gesture by the new prime minister, who has been chancellor of the Exchequer for so long, to give an unequivocal thumbs up to the police college."
But he conceded that he was taking nothing for granted.