Borough Community Engagement Funding

Report: 4
Date: 22 February 2010
By: Chief Executive

Summary

This report outlines the assessment process for community engagement funding allocations to the borough based community engagement groups and seeks member approval for the 2010/11 allocations.

A. Recommendations

That members

1. approve the 2010/11 funding allocations to the community police engagement groups and to LCP2 (see appendix 5)
2. receive an update report to the next sub-committee meeting in April 2010, detailing the final total budget and proposals for the use of any surplus

B. Supporting information

1. Community engagement is an important element of the Authority’s work and is a key driver in developing and maintaining community confidence in policing. The Authority’s borough level community engagement work is driven by the community engagement strategy, which is currently being reviewed and will be finalised in April 2010. The Community Police Engagement Group (CPEG) funding process follows the financial year, so it has not been possible to await the outcome of that review before proceeding with the 2010/11 grants. However, the Authority has had a longstanding commitment to community engagement and this is reaffirmed in the Met Connect strand of Met Forward [1], which in addition to continuing to support the MPA’s strategic priority ‘to transform community engagement’, provides appropriate structure and direction for the 2010/11 process.

2. The key principles underpinning this work, which are unlikely to change significantly under the new community engagement strategy are:

1. the need to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to enable the Authority to hear people’s views on a regular basis
2.  the particular need for these mechanisms to provide opportunities for the views of hard to hear communities to be heard
3.  the need to find new and innovative ways to engage with the diverse range of communities
4.  the need to ensure a degree of standardisation cross all CPEGs whilst recognising that one size does not fit all
5.  the need to ensure continuous improvement and value for money.

Borough Level Community Engagement

3. The engagement and partnerships team has continued to support CPEG development. This has been delivered through both regular contact and attendance at CPEG executive and public meetings and through the service level agreement monitoring processes, which have enabled officers to identify areas for development as well as areas of good practice. For example, all groups are required to produce an annual report and officers have identified where groups’ need to develop their skills in this area and have been able to provide guidance and good practice examples from other CPEGs to support that process. A further example would be where groups have been in the early stages of developing youth conferences and officers have been able to put them in touch with other groups who have been successfully delivering such events for some years to share good practice.

London Communities Policing Partnership

4. The London Communities Policing Partnership (LCP) [2] continues to provide support to CPEGs through the dissemination of information on best practice, the provision of workshops/seminars on a range of topics, such as effective chairing skills and problem solving, and through direct support to a number of CPEGs experiencing particular local difficulties. In addition, LCP2 has provided regular meetings through which chairs and group administrators have been able to meet with their other borough counterparts to discuss issues and concerns, which informs their work on their home boroughs and also supports individual skills development. The engagement and partnerships team has also been able to make effective use of LCP2’s engagement structures to consult and inform CPEGs of developments within the MPA. For example, the consultation on this year’s funding arrangements was first discussed at one of LCP2’s chairs’ meetings.

5. LCP2 has further developed its London-wide community engagement role through the quarterly meetings it facilitates between CPEG chairs and the commissioner, in which a wide range of issues has been discussed. Through this process LCP2 has been able to make a positive contribution to the work of the MPA/MPS contributing the knowledge and understanding of community views it has gained through its constituent members (CPEGs), and has, for example, been invited to join the dangerous dogs panel. LCP2 has also has taken positive steps to ensure Londoners views are being represented on important issues, such as pubic order policing and they actively sought an opportunity to feed into the Home Office’s review of the policing of the G20 demonstrations. In addition, LCP2 has developed links with a range of external partners with an interest in community engagement and community safety, such as the City of London and British Transport Police Services.

6. In addition to its role as the CPEG umbrella group, and in line with their pan-London remit, LCP2 has been developing a project -London Communities’ Crime Concerns (LC3) - to collate data on the range of topics discussed across London in public CPEG meetings (see Appendix 1). The first output from this project compares data from the pilot period, October – December 2008, to data collated between January and June 2009. As one might expect community engagement, communication between the police and the public, safer neighbourhood teams and partnerships were amongst the most often discussed issues. The three fastest rising topics were the policing pledge, the decline in recorded crime and police staffing numbers. There were also a number of new entrants to the list; public order policing, policing structures and vulnerable people. Some issues no longer appear in the list of matters discussed and these included diversity (as a specific issue), serious violence and seasonal crime.

7. Although still in the early stages of development, this information is useful and will provide additional data that can be fed into the Authority’s London-wide consultation processes. It also demonstrates that CPEGs are discussing and engaging with their communities about a wide range of issues, some of which are continued concerns, such as antisocial behaviour, but others are more topical, such as public order policing and this is encouraging, suggesting that CPEGs are able to respond to new and emerging issues as they arise.

Funding Application and Assessment Processes

8. As part of our continued commitment to developing effective borough level community engagement structures, the application form and associated guidance has been updated this year to ensure all CPEGs have a full understanding of how their work should contribute to the Authority’s aims and objectives (see appendix 2). The changes that have been made to the proforma [to sections 1.10, 2.2, and to sections 4.1 to 4.3] are intended to enable officers to gather high level data on the representation of the six diversity strands amongst CPEG memberships and to give officers a better understanding of how groups are relating to LCP2 and to other MPA/MPS community engagement mechanisms at the borough level, such as independent advisory groups and safer neighbourhood panels. Further changes have been made to the proforma to streamline the application and service level agreement processes and the updated guidance provides greater clarity on the Authority’s aims and objectives and how the CPEGs’ annual work programmes should link to those.

9. In addition to the range of qualitative data supplied in the application form, groups are also asked to supply details of their proposed budget against various headings (See appendix 3 performance and guidance notes). Given the need to ensure continuous improvement and to secure value for money, this year's assessment process took a different approach to assessing the financial aspects of the bids. A detailed spreadsheet was devised to identify the average spends against each headline and to give an upper and lower limit within which one might normally expect expenditure against each heading to fall (see appendix 4). Individual bid applications were distributed amongst the engagement and partnerships officers so that no officer assessed the boroughs for which they are the link and each bid was assessed through a three-stage process.

10. At the first stage of the process the financial aspects of each bid were analysed against the upper and lower limits and any expenditure items that fell outside of those parameters were highlighted as a query. Assessors also made some qualitative judgements through this process, e.g. in terms of considering whether the identified expenditure supported the work plan and also noted any queries in relation to this area of the bids. Queries fell into one of three categories.

11. The first related to staffing costs and where they hit the trigger level officers sought clarification as to the level of service provided by that particular administrator. Clearly one would expect basic administration to be costed at a much lower rate than more specialist and challenging development work.

12. The second related to all other budget lines that exceeded the trigger levels. This might relate to accommodation costs where officers sought to clarify the type and size of accommodation and whether any particular services were also included in that cost.

13. The final category related to expenditure that was classified as ‘other’ and which exceeded £5000.00. In this instance officers sought a more detailed breakdown of those costs to better understand the range and size of expenditure included in this category.

14. In the second stage the assessment sheets were passed to the link officer for their assessment of the group's achievements over the previous year. This included both qualitative and quantitative considerations that would have been highlighted through the quarterly monitoring processes throughout 2009/10, as well as details of any risks and issues that might impact on their ability to deliver in the forthcoming year. Link officers were also asked to review and address the queries list and any issues they could not resolve were then referred to the group for clarification.

15. In the third stage, officers reviewed each borough bid and noted any identified surplus from 2009/10 and the total sum of any queried expenditure, which were both then deducted from the total bid amount to arrive at the figure for the initial allocation for 2010/11 (see appendix 5).

16. The purpose of doing this was to ensure that unless the group could justify retention of those funds any identified surpluses and queried amounts would be retained by the Authority. Upon satisfactory resolution of identified issues the initial allocation would then be increased up to either the total bid amount or to the maximum of £50 000.00, with the potential for some groups to also retain a surplus from 2009/10 above that level.

Lessons learned

17. This year’s assessment process was detailed and rigorous and provided clear parameters within which to benchmark and assess the groups’ expenditure and activities. It also provided an opportunity for groups to really consider their expenditure and to look at value for money issues, which they can take forward over the coming year. Once the process has been fully completed the engagement and partnerships team will be seeking feedback from all CPEGs through LCP2 and this will be used to further improve the process.

18. Although designed to support the funding process, the Authority has been able to gather a great deal of useful information that will be of benefit to all CPEGs, particularly in supporting their understanding of their financial position and in developing their role in delivering value for money. Further work will also be conducted throughout 2010/11 with the Authority’s benchmarking officer to further develop the value for money framework.
19. Most groups have identified the need for further training in various areas and this has also been raised throughout 2009/10 through the monitoring process. The information gathered through this process will enable the engagement and partnerships team to work with LCP2 to develop a more targeted training programme. For example, there would appear to be a need for further training in managing and employing staff and in how to fully engage with crime and disorder reduction partnerships.

20. For any future process the proforma would be amended so that the headline expenditure categories were expanded to provide more consistent and detailed information on planned expenditure and the timetable would also be brought forward and perhaps separated into two stages, looking first at the work plan and then the financial plans.

C. Race and equality impact

21. An equality impact assessment (EIA) has been conducted, which identified two specific issues (i) the need to ensure CPEGs are more representative of the increasingly diverse population of London and (ii) the need to ensure equality of access to CPEG structures and these issues have been addressed in a number of ways.

22. Firstly, it is a funding requirement for all groups to have adopted an equality statement and to make demonstrable efforts to ensure that their membership criteria and activities are in line with good practice. In addition, this year’s funding application asked all CPEGs to identify whether and how many of their constituent member groups represented the six diversity strands gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, religion/faith and age. Where there are specific gaps in their memberships, CPEGs have been asked to specify how they have been and/or intend to address them in their work plans. This is a somewhat crude method, so to assist in addressing matters of diversity in a more sophisticated way, the Engagement and Partnerships Team will also be facilitating groups’ access to relevant demographic data profiles of their local communities and working with them to engage with any identified groups.

23. With regards to equality of access and the conduct and management of public meetings, the practical handbook for CPEGs provides advice on ensuring those activities are accessible and the engagement and partnerships team will continue to liaise with both equalities and diversity colleagues and with LCP2 to ensure that information regarding good practice and changes to legislation are effectively distributed to the groups. In addition, the EIA identified the need for groups to more widely advertise their desire to be open and accessible to all sections of the community and that they will make appropriate provision for those who have specific needs. This does have a cost implication, which in many cases cannot be met from within the CPEG’s existing budgets, but given the Authority public sector duties and its commitment to ensuring that its engagement mechanisms are open and accessible, additional funds will be made available through the equalities and engagement unit’s central budget. In addition, the engagement and partnerships team will be working with LCP2 to deliver some core equalities and diversity training for all CPEGs and attendance will be a funding condition.

D. Financial implications

24. The total budget for borough level community engagement and for the London-wide group is £1.7 million and this is contained within existing budgets. A further sum will be provided from within the central equalities and engagement budget to meet access needs. This has initially been set at £5 000.00, but may exceed that amount.

25. In assessing this year’s applications, officers have taken account of any monies remaining from the previous year’s allocation and have also queried some identified expenditure, as well as considering each group’s ability to fully deliver against the Authority’s required outcomes. Not all groups have bid for the full £50 000.00 that is available to each borough and some will not receive the full amount for which they have made a bid for 2010/11. The identified surpluses and queried amounts total £186 725.00 and £94 694.00 respectively. If both the surpluses and queried amounts are retained by the Authority, then total of all allocations for 2010/11 will be £1.364 million. If the only the surpluses are retained the total will be £1.551 million and if groups receive both the queried amounts and are able to retain the surpluses, then the total will be £1.645 million. An update report will be submitted to this sub-committee in April 2010 advising members as to the total of the allocations for 2010/11 and proposals for the use of any surplus up to £1.6 million.

26. Allocations to CPEGs will be made in two tranches, the first in April 2010 and the second in December 2010, provided the group is compliant with the requirements of their service level agreement (monitored quarterly), which ensures the Authority can effectively manage any risks associated with investing monies in borough level engagement.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author(s): Natasha Plummer, MPA

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback