Agenda item

The Panel must consider and comment on the Commissioner’s Annual Report.

The Commissioner presented his statutory Annual Report detailing the exercise of his functions over the past year and reflecting on the progress of the 2022-23 Police and Crime Plan objectives. It was emphasised that the report was currently in draft form and any comments and recommendations of Panel Members would be taken into account in the final version.

 

The Commissioner confirmed that the Constabulary had exceeded the Home Office uplift target, finishing the year with 3,393 officers. This is 266 more officers than at the end of the previous year.

 

The Commissioner acknowledged the enormity of the task both he and the Chief Constable faced in meeting the ongoing challenges relating to public confidence and meeting priorities within a limited budget. He emphasised that he wanted to work with the Panel, welcoming the proposal to establish Task and Finish Groups on these issues.

 

The Commissioner emphasised that he would hold the Chief Constable to account on all aspects of the improvement programme emerging from the HMICFRS inspection and the resulting updates and progress against actions will be reported to the Panel. 

 

In an effort to improve, and develop leadership and culture change, the Commissioner added that visits had been undertaken to Sandhurst, Westbury and the MOD to learn best practice from a variety of organisations.

 

He reminded the Panel that the Annual Report was a draft and welcomed feedback from the Panel.  The report will be finalised and published, with the final version brought back to the Panel at the September meeting.

 

During the discussion, the following points were made:

 

The Panel referenced the positive, albeit small, improvement in performance in relation to Rape and Sexual Violence outcomes as a result of Operation Bluestone. The grants that go to victim support organisations were also welcomed by the Panel, but further information was sought on preventative measures and education that may be taking place to tackle misogyny and violence against women and girls.

 

The Commissioner agreed that education was vitally important for working towards the prevention of crimes such as violence against women and girls, misuse of drugs and violence caused by drugs.  All require a strong community response that this behaviour is not acceptable. This is an important aspect of the work of the Violence Reduction Units across the Force area.

 

The Commissioner reiterated his desire for research into effective education strategies from age 4 and confirmed that he had requested work to enable messaging to be targeted in an age-appropriate way. 

 

The Commissioner said it was important for women and girls to know what help was available.  He gave the example of the initiative run last summer where pharmacies provided a safe space for victims to be able to access support. 

 

The Panel emphasised it was equally important to educate boys and men not to become abusers, as well as informing victims on how they could escape abuse.

 

The Commissioner was invited to comment on any plans to provide improved training for Police officers on violence against women and girls. The Panel was advised that the Bluestone approach was providing different results and women were now more likely to remain engaged with their cases. The Panel made the point that Bluestone was only one aspect - harassment, stalking and domestic abuse were day to day activities for the wider force and outcomes for the totality of recorded crime remained very low. Were there any plans to roll out a better training model for all officers?

 

The attention of the Panel was drawn to a major piece of work from last year.  ‘Domestic Abuse Matters’ training had been rolled out to over 2,300 front line officers and staff with a view to providing insight into the complexities of relationships and behaviours to improve the response to domestic abuse.

 

The Panel noted that domestic abuse was not always reported and that positive outcomes for victims who did report domestic abuse was low.

 

The Commissioner agreed it was traumatic for anyone to suffer an attack of a sexual nature.  Operation Bluestone involves a victim-centred approach.  He said as a result of Operation Bluestone, officers had received a great deal of training on best practice in relation to investigating and prosecuting rape and serious sexual offences which included hard-hitting messages. 

 

The Panel asked what assurance measures were in place to enable the Commissioner to be confident that tangible progress was being made. 

 

The Commissioner had recently visited the College of Policing.  He said it had been interesting to learn how new officers were being trained to prepare files for prosecution.

 

With regard to the prevention of drug-related crime and improved drug testing in custody suites, the Panel noted 465 people had tested positive for opiates after their arrest.  The Panel requested the number that had taken up the Constabulary’s offer of treatment and it was agreed that this would be provided.

 

The Panel sought further information on the DPCC’s day to day role and responsibilities and progress achieved and requested that this was included in the Annual Report. 

 

The Panel invited the Commissioner to comment on the robustness of vetting procedures and whether he intended to make any improvements. The Commissioner said that vetting of officers and staff was extremely important, and had been the subject of a recent HMIC report. A national programme has recently taken place to check all employees against the Police National Database. Any matches were sent the local force. The Constabulary’s Professional standards department have been working through these matches and appropriate action is being taken in relation to the employees. It was confirmed that all new officers have been checked against a national database. 

 

With reference to the glossary at page 106, the Panel noted that public confidence was measured by a question in the local survey. The Commissioner was asked if he had confidence in the way in which data was gathered.

 

He explained a cohort of members of the public were selected at random from across the Avon and Somerset area to be surveyed four times per year each year and their perceptions were compared year on year.  The Panel recommended that the survey should not involve the same sample group each year and should be sufficiently representative of all community groups. It was suggested that 750 (as noted in the report) appeared a relatively small number to gauge such an important statistic. It was clarified that this sample size is statistically significant. However, it was acknowledged that the diversity of the respondents could be improved.

 

The Panel asked if stop and search data included explanations as to why the stop and search took place. The Commissioner confirmed that stop and search data included full details of the rationale for the stop. The Panel asked if stop and search remained primarily intelligence led and if so, to what extent this impacted on the data/disproportionality in ethnicity. The Commissioner clarified the power is used in both an intelligence-led way and an officer-led way. Intelligence-led stop and searches provided better outcomes. The Independent Scrutiny of Police Powers Panel scrutinises these issues.

 

Members queried the response to 999 and 101 calls.  Members were concerned that the 11.4% of the 101 calls being abandoned was representative of an exponential curve.  The Commissioner said this was an enduring problem and may be related to the high number of callers who were not actually reporting a crime but seeking support that was better delivered by other agencies. He explained the triage system that was in place for calls, including a Mental Health triage service.  The control room was constantly connected to monitors recording their statistics in clear sight of call handlers and they were constantly trying to improve. 

 

Members were further concerned that a quarter of 999 calls requiring immediate response were not attended to within 15/20 minutes and the trend seemed to be getting worse. The Panel made the point that this was a public confidence issue and the Commissioner emphasised that the Chief Constable was alert to his concerns.

 

The Director of Performance and Accountability explained challenges around recruitment to the control room. Staff were required to be on-site and the pandemic and the emerging practice of working from home had impacted on recruitment to this particular strand of the service.  There was now a focus on recruitment to the control room.

 

Members further queried what measures the Constabulary was employing to address the carbon emissions. The target of achieving 30% electrification of the fleet by 2027 was welcomed but the Panel sought clarification of the intention to reduce the number of diesel cars by swapping to petrol. Why not switch to hybrid now given the government’s deadline to phase out all petrol and diesel cars by 2030?

 

The Commissioner suggested the infrastructure may not be ready by 2030 for the service to be wholly reliant on electric or hybrid vehicles and therefore, the Constabulary needed to be guided by operational requirements.  He supported the use of hybrid vehicles. The Panel urged caution as car companies had also started phasing out petrol and diesel cars and moving towards hybrid and electric models in anticipation of the 2030 deadline.

 

The Chair and Vice Chair offered to assist with “de-jargoning” parts of the report for the benefit of the public/accessibility.

 

Members welcomed the expansion of Bluestone resources but expressed concern that this was being repeatedly cited as “significant progress” along with the positive outcome increase from 4.7 to 8%. It was suggested that the annual report is revised to reflect the Commissioner’s statement to the Panel that this outcome is not good enough on the basis that it is coming from a low starting point. The Panel commented that the report highlighted challenges and areas for improvement without detailing precisely how those areas might be improved.

 

Given the financial challenges with the report predicting a 15m shortfall in 3 years, the Panel considered the allocation of 80 staff to identify, and record missed crime to be a significant use of resources (4,851 additional crimes in 12 months that would otherwise have been unrecorded with 1,421 being domestic abuse crimes). The Panel took the view that the most efficient and effective course would be to ensure that they are recorded at the outset and hope that the recent Domestic Abuse training helps to reduce the number of unrecorded Domestic Abuse cases.

 

With regard to data quality and the Home Office requirements, the Commissioner explained sometimes crimes were reported to the police, along with reports of historic crimes which had not been reported to them at the time.

 

In response to queries about managing demand, the Commissioner accepted that neighbourhood officers were still being required to respond to 999 calls but planning was a key focus and where neighbourhood officers were asked to respond, it would be within their area. The point was made that summer was the busiest period demand wise. The Panel shared anecdotal reports of their experience of officer abstraction from neighbourhood teams.

 

The Panel noted that throughout 2022/23, the Internal Audit function completed 9 substantive audits. It was further noted that7 of the audits resulted in a reasonable assurance opinion and 3 in a limited assurance opinion, amounting to 10. The Commissioner explained the reason for the anomaly and agreed to send further information about the audits to the Panel after the meeting.

 

The Panel noted that recent accounts for year ending 2023 detailed a £3.7m underspend, which implied £3.7m of non-recurring items. There appeared to not be a complete income/expenditure account. Additionally, there was a note of a transfer of reserves totalling £3.7m and the Panel asked if this was the other side of the same transaction.

 

The Commissioner further agreed to provide an answer outside of the meeting.

 

The Panel suggested the annual report would benefit from additional statistical information demonstrating progress against the Police and Crime Plan as some measures set out in the Police and Crime Plan were not reflected in the Annual Report. The Commissioner was asked if this indicated a shift in priorities and if there were any plans to refresh the plan.

 

The Commissioner agreed to update the Panel with performance outcomes against the measures set out in the Police and Crime Plan and review the draft Annual Report to reflect this focus.

 

In response to the Panel’s question around levels of officer retention, the Commissioner explained that most leavers were due to retirement in line with forecasts. He was comfortable that officers were not leaving the service in unacceptably high numbers for other reasons.  In the most recent month for example, turnover of officers was at 7.5% and consistent with the previous year.

 

The Panel felt the report had not been very clear about the reason for the reduction of PCSOs.  The Commissioner explained that many PCSOs went on to be recruited as Police Officers.

 

He added that with regard to savings, they needed to be considered carefully and to be longsighted, for example when considering sale of police estate. 

 

The Commissioner gave examples of ways in which the service had tried to boost morale.  This included a family fun day for the police and fire services and looking into minimising parking charges for officers at Police stations.

 

Members agreed that the report was well set out and readability had improved. However, there was some jargon within it which could hold back the general public from fully understanding it.

 

Actions:

 

1.    The resulting updates and progress against actions emerging from the PEEL Inspection Improvement Programme to be made available to the Panel.

2.    Chair and Vice Chair offered to assist with “de-jargning” parts of the report for the benefit of the public/accessibility.

3.   Further information on the DPCC’s day to day role and responsibilities and progress achieved to be included in the Annual Report.

4.   The Panel recommended that the report is revised to reflect the Commissioner’s statement to the Panel that the Bluestone positive outcome rate is not good enough.

5.   The Panel recommended that the report be revised in line with the comments that it highlighted challenges and areas for improvement without detailing precisely how those areas might be improved.

6.   The Commissioner agreed to confirm the number of those who had taken up the offer of treatment for drug use following their arrest and positive test for drugs.

7.    The Commissioner agreed to send the Panel detail of the 10 internal audits.

8.   The Commissioner agreed to update the Panel with performance outcomes against the measures set out in the Police and Crime Plan and review the draft Annual Report to reflect this focus.