HMIC have recently completed their first round inspections of the police and pledge. They visited seven forces ( Avon and Somerset, Cumbria, Essex, the Met, Northants, South Wales and West Yorkshire) as well as undertaking reality checks and website reviews.
They have delivered a generally favourable state of the nation review, finding that there is strong leadership and personal commitment to the pledge at chief officer and operational level. They identify gaps in the communication (both internal and external) of the pledge and express concern that few forces appeared to be effectively monitoring the delivery of what has been pledged.
Overall then, a promising start. Some detailed points from the report:
All seven police forces visited had a clear direction from chief officers, together with a set of values that help underpin their commitment to provide a highly professional service. The forces all had clear diversity and equality strategies in place. The forces had also carried out a range of reviews to assess and improve access to services.
There were some good examples of getting through to harder to reach groups, but there was little evidence of the Pledge itself being translated into other languages; and formal consultation with minority groups or independent advisory groups on the Pledge itself.
The IPCC has identified incivility as one of the highest causes of customer dissatisfaction yet HMIC state that ‘We have not found very effective practice in responding to dissatisfaction, nor evidence of any considerable capacity to capture, analyse and learn from experiences to support organisational learning'.
Pledge point 2
Overall the work of neighbourhood teams is generally well explained on force websites
Pledge point 3
Assessing the amount of time teams spend in neighbourhoods is problematic.
Pledge point 4
There was evidence of a real commitment on the part of staff to get back to members of the public quickly. However, it is also true that this is a difficult area to monitor.
Pledge points 5 & 6:
Generally HMIC identified a very strong customer service ethos among staff who deal with
calls from the public on a daily basis. Their visits showed that staff have a good knowledge of the Pledge and an understanding of the key role they have to play in delivering it. All seven forces demonstrated that they have a well-developed performance monitoring regime within contact management centres and a strong commitment to improving performance was very apparent.
HMIC also found some good work being done in respect of advice and guidance to staff concerning vulnerable or upset members of the public. They identified some excellent processes within contact management centres to ensure that neighbourhood priorities were instantly flagged to the staff. However, areas of challenge remain, including: a force being confident in estimating the time of arrival for a response unit; ensuring that calls relating to agreed neighbourhood priorities are responded to within the 60-minute target; and appointment systems, where they exist, are somewhat embryonic.
HMIC state that ‘This is a critical area of work for forces as they develop their delivery of the Pledge and will be subject to further reality checking’
Pledge point 7
There was good evidence of meetings taking place but HMIC considered that there was still
a wide variation in terms of how the meeting was run. (There is clearly a training and skills issue associated with this point)
Pledge point 8
All forces have introduced crime mapping and some good practice exists, such as the e-cops electronic update in Cambridgeshire, in terms of providing updates on crime and policing issues. However, once again, this is an area for development, particularly with regard to consistency and sophistication.
A few forces which are particularly strong in terms of their approach to Citizen Focus policing encourage feedback from the public and use that feedback to improve their services. Critical to this approach is that the public can make their comments relatively easily, for example by using links from the police force home page, from quality of service pages or from the Pledge itself.
There are some examples of forces taking quick action to address any dissatisfaction or concerns. However, HMIC found that while all forces have well-established systems for dealing with what has been traditionally referred to as ‘complaints against the police’, there was little evidence of a systematic approach to managing general dissatisfaction. They found it ‘particularly challenging’ to find any robust evidence of forces acknowledging dissatisfaction with the service within 24 hours of it being reported. This will be a further area for testing during inspection.
About half of all complaint allegations relate to incivility, yet it was apparent from some focus groups run by HMIC that there was little local awareness about which issues were being raised by local people in terms of dissatisfaction – or how to resolve them.
Comprehensive communication strategies were evident in all the forces HMIC visited, however awareness and understanding of the Pledge varied. Contact management and Neighbourhood Policing staff were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Elsewhere in the organisation, awareness levels were below acceptable.
HMIC’s advice: Forces would be advised to check their overall communications strategy and processes for monitoring delivery of the Policing Pledge.
HMIC’s conclusion: The Policing Pledge is a commitment to the public. Early signs from scoping work are encouraging; however, there is no room for complacency. Forces need to ‘step up a gear’ and focus their efforts to ensure that the Pledge becomes a reality.
The full report can be found in the sidebar under HMIC.
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