Removal of Policing Pledge - Measures of Confidence and Satisfaction

Report: 6
Date: 13 December 2010
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

The MPS remains committed to improving confidence in policing and developing trust within London’s communities along with the ambition to provide excellent customer service. This paper proposes a set of public statements to replace the Policing Pledge which set out the MPS intentions. The MPS will monitor progress towards these aims through existing performance frameworks and governance arrangements.

A. Recommendations

That members: Endorse the proposed public statements and approve the proposed approach to promoting and monitoring the MPS commitment to improving confidence and delivering excellent customer service.

B. Supporting information

Introduction and background

1. Shortly after the general election the new coalition government took the step of removing, with immediate effect, both the single confidence target and the Policing Pledge. Since that time the MPS has been developing a suitable replacement for the Pledge promises. The Commissioner has stated that he believes that it is imperative that providing an excellent tailored service generating public confidence remain at the forefront of the focus of the MPS.

2. The Policing Pledge was implemented as a promise to the public over the level of service that they could expect from the Police nationally. In summary, the MPS Policing Pledge carried commitments to the people of London in the following areas:

• Commitments to provide dedicated, skilled and accessible Safer Neighbourhood teams working alongside communities to the priorities that the community set.
• Commitments to an excellent standard of care for victims, witnesses and callers.
• Commitments to engage with the public through regular public meetings (including surgeries, street briefings and mobile police stations) to understand more about local problems.
• A Commitment to acknowledge any dissatisfaction with service (separate to official complaints about police behaviour) promptly and provide an opportunity to talk to someone in person about concerns

3. A report to the MPS Performance Board of 27 July 2010 set out the implications of the government’s decision to scrap both the Policing Pledge and the joint confidence target. The two conclusions of that paper, which were accepted by Performance Board, were:

• The MPS should focus attention on the findings and trends consequent to the question “to what extent do you think that the police in this area are doing a good job?” as tracked in both the British Crime Survey (BCS) and MPS Public Attitude Survey (PAS).
• That a set of public facing messages be developed to outline our commitment to improving confidence and delivering excellent customer service.

Performance Board commissioned further development of the public messages and consideration of how the MPS could measure the success against the promises without recreating the scorecard used to assess the Policing Pledge. Progress on this was summarised to the MPA Strategic and Operational Policing Committee who requested further information and development.

4. Whilst the coalition government took the decision to remove any formal measurement of the Policing Pledge and the single confidence target, the values behind both of these are retained within the new corporate strategic assessment which advocates improving confidence as a principal outcome.

5. Monitoring the performance around each element of the Policing Pledge meant that a detailed scorecard was produced and analysed. This approach incentivised activity to achieve statistical targets but did not always reflect actual high quality outcomes for the public. This paper therefore proposes a series of key messages that could form the basis of any replacement for the Pledge and identifies existing corporate data that monitors activity and outcomes against quality and satisfaction rather than statistical targets. The proposed measures will allow Pan London and business area management to understand headline performance relating to confidence and satisfaction. It will also provide them with diagnostic data sets that will allow the identification of the causal factors behind both poor and good performance.

External messages

6. The proposed statements which detail the MPS’s commitment to the communities of London are outlined below. These proposed messages have been previously submitted to members of Performance Board, however prior to publication they will be adapted by the DPA and ‘acceptance tested’. We will then seek to include the statements in external communications and publicise accordingly.

Statement 1 - Fairness

• We will always treat you fairly with dignity and respect, ensuring you have fair access to our services at a time that is reasonable and suitable for you.

Statement 2 - Responding and listening to your concerns

• We will answer all telephone calls promptly. We will respond rapidly in cases of emergency. If we agree that police attendance is needed in other situations, we will send a patrol, giving you an estimated time of arrival and if we fail to keep to this we will explain why. If we agree with you that the attendance of a police officer is not necessary we will give you advice, answer your questions and / or put you in touch with someone more appropriate who can help.
• Your local Safer Neighbourhood Team will organise a range of opportunities to allow you to tell us about the issues of crime and disorder that matter to you and for you to find out how you can become involved in dealing with these issues. We will publicise these events and our attendance widely and in a variety of ways so that they are inclusive and involve the widest representation from your local community.
• Problem solving; we will work hard together with our local partners to put in place long term solutions to persistent crime and anti-social behaviour problems in your area.

Statement 3 - Your local Safer Neighbourhoods Team

• We will provide you with information so you know who the members of your dedicated Safer Neighbourhood Team are, where they are based, how to contact them and how to work with them.
• We will ensure your Safer Neighbourhood Team and other police patrols are visible and in your neighbourhood at times when they will be most effective and when you tell us you most need them.

Statement 4 - Keeping you informed

• We will give you the latest information on what we have achieved to reduce crime and disorder and improve the safety of your local community. We will provide specific information about local crime and disorder issues and continue to make this available on the MPS website – viewed through the web pages of your local borough police.
• If you have been a victim of crime, we will agree with you how often you would like to be kept informed of progress in your case and for how long. You have the right to be kept informed at least every month if you wish, and for as long as is reasonable. (NB this is consistent with Victim Code of Practice legislation).

Statement 5 - When things go wrong

• If we fail to deliver the high standards of service that we strive for, we will agree with you what will be done to put it right and in the most effective way to your satisfaction. We will also try to put in place measures to prevent it happening again.

Measuring success against the statements

7. The MPS is already working successfully towards improving public confidence. The latest BCS quarterly results indicate that the percentage of people who think that the Metropolitan Police is ‘doing a good job’ has risen significantly from 55.1% in the last financial year to 59.5% at the end of this most recent reporting period. The MPS was also consistently the most successful when compared to most similar forces.

8. The BCS survey does however have limitations. The sample size of just 3,000 people across the whole of London provides no insights at borough level.

9. In order to form a better understanding of local opinion across London, the MPS has, for a number of years undertaken its own survey, the Public Attitude Survey (PAS). The PAS uses a far more extensive sample size to generate results and provides Borough specific information. At the present time the Strategy, Research and Analysis Unit are examining options in relation to the continued provision of the PAS and the format of it. This will be the subject of a paper to Management Board. A change in service provider is necessary due to the inability of the current company to provide the service after the end of the current financial year. The revised approach will seek to ensure that the data gathered is reported on each month, is statistically reliable, Borough based and allows managers to be confident in using it as a decision making tool. It will focus on local problems, visibility, engagement and confidence.

10. The MPS has historically used the ‘good job’ question in the PAS as a guide to understanding public confidence, i.e. “Taking everything into account how good a job do you think the police in this area doing?” The resultant trend has shown an increase over the previous three years and currently places the confidence level at 62%.

11. In addition to the British Crime Survey and the Public Attitude Survey the MPS also use the User Satisfaction Survey (USS) to gather qualitative data on performance. The USS measures satisfaction of victims with the service they have received from the MPS. The results are gathered through interviews with 18,000 victims per year. The USS focuses on burglary, violent crime, vehicle crime, road traffic accidents and racially motivated crime. The data is provided to the Home Office, HMIC, Metstats and the MPA on a quarterly and annual basis.

12. In order to ensure effective delivery of the proposed statements the corporate performance products will contain data sets that provide an understanding of the both headline performance results for public confidence and customer satisfaction, along with diagnostic information. This data will meet the following principles:-

• The data will be available monthly
• The data will be provided on a Pan London, business area and (B)OCU basis.
• The data will allow for comparisons between business areas as well as with the MPS’s most similar forces.
• The diagnostic data sets provided will drive effective performance in delivering increased confidence and satisfaction.

In addition to statistical data sets, delivery of the statements will also be driven by a number of qualitative interventions and assessments. These will include:

• Minimum standards for quality assurance of SNT website content
• Minimum standards for SNT engagement plans.
• Audits of problem solving processes
• Assessment of independent advisory input into problem solving and critical incident management.
• Qualitative review of customer feedback comments obtained from USS respondents and on-line surveys.

13. It is important to clarify that this statistical data is already available in existing performance products and will not form a separate scorecard, similar to the one used to assess performance against the Pledge. The performance management will not result in the MPS striving for statistical success at the expense of public confidence, in effect hitting the target but missing the point, instead the data will provide qualitative diagnostic tools for management to assess effectiveness in driving confidence. A table of example diagnostic tools which are already available are available at Appendix 1.

14. Following a series of joint development workshops the corporate data product has been updated to reflect outcomes against the proposed Promise themes. This will be further developed to include trend information available down to ward level to indicate prevalence of vulnerable people and victims (repeat callers, hate crimes, juvenile victims, etc.), dangerous offenders or those who present risk (ASBOs, ABCs, PPOs, etc.) persistent or vulnerable locations and changes to these categories over time.

15. These measures when taken together (i.e. a combination of corporate data, satisfaction survey information and borough evidence) should provide considerable information from which to track compliance and improvements to the aspiration for improve confidence and satisfaction. This framework can be adjusted to reflect the appropriate hierarchy of data for consideration by Performance Board, Key Performance Review Meetings, Area and (B)OCU level performance meetings and clustered/ward meetings.

C. Other organisational and community implications

Equality and Diversity Impact

1. This report seeks to highlight the importance of continuing to capture and understand the experiences of as many service users and different communities as possible so as to assess the factors that can help deliver improved confidence and satisfaction in the MPS and improve levels of satisfaction received. Our ambition should be to ensure that the philosophy behind the Policing Pledge is retained and that improvements are seen and felt by Londoners, particularly when examining the different satisfaction rates between white and BME customers.

2. This is consistent with the expectations of the MPS Diversity and Equality Strategy 2009 – 2013 specifically theme one, 'Fair and Responsive Services':

• Ensure we are delivering services that are accessible and responsive to people's needs
• Ensure we are treating people fairly and with respect

3. The MPS and MPA have recently endorsed the 'MPA and MPS Community Engagement Commitment 2010 – 2013 which contains a commitment to monitor broadly similar themes, namely:

• Increased public confidence in the police
• A wider range of people are taking part in MPA and MPS community engagement

and the introduction of replacements for the Pledge promises as an approach to delivering excellent service would help to reinforce those commitments.

4. There are equality impact assessments which are currently being conducted on the specific work-streams deriving from the projects within the paper presented.

5. For instance the EIA on the changes to the methodology in the Public Attitude Survey presents some risks not only in relation to the impact of the changes on different equality groups per se, but also the risk to the MPS in not collecting demographic information on all equality groups.

6. Specifically, the proposed changes to the monthly five minute ‘tracker’ telephone survey, which will provide borough level survey data, will focus on collecting data only on the gender, race and age of the respondent. Religion or belief, sexual orientation and disability data will not be collected or evaluated in this process. This change in methodology runs the risk of falling short of the obligations under the Equality Act 2010 public sector duties, which will require public sector bodies to collect data on all of the protected equality characteristics (including religion or belief; sexual orientation; disability). There is also a risk that the changes will make it difficult and, in some cases, impossible for the MPS to provide information and evidence to answer challenges from the MPA, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and other bodies in relation to the service delivery provided to specific equality groups protected under the legislation.

Consideration of MET Forward

7. If these recommendations are adopted, the MPS will be able to re-assert its policing promises to the public to reflect the focus on customer service principles contained within the corporate strategic priorities and MET Forward i.e. to constantly strive for improved public confidence by demonstrating we are ‘on their side’, to fight crime and reduce criminality to make our communities safer and to deliver the best possible value for money by involving people in priority setting and active citizenship.

Financial Implications

8. There are no additional financial implications arising from the recommendation or supporting information contained in this report.

Legal Implications

9. There are no specific legal implications arising from this report and the recommendation can be lawfully approved.

Environmental Implications

10. There are no environmental implications in the content of the report.

Risk Implications

11. There is a slight risk that the abolition of the Policing Pledge and the Home Secretary’s signal that the sole purpose of the police should be to concentrate on crime reduction could lead to a reduction in focus on standards of improving community confidence and delivering excellent customer service. Nonetheless with the strong lead from the Commissioner, the published MPS strategic priorities of improving confidence, safety, and value for money and the current drive towards a more customer service based culture, the proposals in this paper should help mitigate this.

D. Background papers

None

E. Contact details

Report author(s): Chief Superintendent Adrian Hanstock, Safer Neighbourhoods OCU, MPS

For information contact:

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

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