Strategic priorities: initial measures and targets

Report: 8
Date: 25 January 2007
By: Director of Strategy Modernisation and Performance Directorate for the Commissioner

Summary

The business plan submission to the Mayor and GLA was agreed by Management Board and the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) Full Authority in November 2006. The business plan is now in the process of being refocused to form the Annual Policing Plan, suitable for the public and other stakeholders.

This report outlines the progress on the development of the 2007/08 Annual Policing Plan, including an update on the development of the high level objectives, measures and targets that underpin the operational corporate priorities for 2007/2008.

A. Recommendation

That

1. members note the progress on the development of the Annual Policing Plan; and
2. provide initial feedback on the proposed high-level objectives and developing measures and targets contained within this report, pending more substantive consideration at the Authority on 22 February 2007.

B. Supporting information

Integrated business/financial planning framework

1. The integrated business/financial-planning framework reflects a developing process which aims to ensure that resource decisions are driven by strategic priorities and business need.

2. The 2007/08 business planning process required every business group to write a business plan that outlined their main activities and demonstrated how these supported the strategic priorities and outcomes. They were also expected to align their financial and human resources to their delivery plan.

3. One of the outputs of this planning process is the three-year corporate business plan, which outlines what the MPA/MPS plans to deliver in support of the priorities, together with the resources required. This includes a high-level 2007/08-delivery plan for which objectives; measures and targets for 2007/08 are being progressed.

The corporate business plan

4. The corporate business plan has three main purposes:

• To set out how the strategic priorities contained within the corporate strategy will be delivered over the next three years, and how business groups will contribute to their achievement.
• To ensure the content of the plan meets the requirements of the business plan submission to the Mayor. This includes the financial projections (e.g. clearly identified increases in the base budget, including major initiatives and service improvements, expected changes to the funding base and efficiency savings).
• To present to the public and other stakeholders how the corporate strategy will improve service delivery to Londoners, meets their needs and demonstrates that taxpayers’ money is being appropriately spent.

5. The 2007/08 corporate business plan formed the budget submission to the Mayor in November, and was agreed by MPS Management Board on the 17 October. The high level delivery plan for 2007/08, aligned to the strategic priorities, was included within the business plan, seen by members at a joint Planning, Performance and Review Committee (PPR)/Finance Committee in November 2006, as well as Authority in November and December 2006.

6. The corporate business plan was positively received by members at the Authority meeting in December, who considered that the document was a step in the right direction. Members asked that future plans should demonstrate stronger links between finance and strategic priorities and objectives.

7. In order for the document to be suitable for an external audience, the business plan is now being refocused to form the Annual Policing Plan, to be published on 31 March 2007. An update on the development of the proposed high-level objectives, measures and targets was presented to PPRC on 16 January 2007.

8. Members are requested to provide initial feedback on the proposed high-level objectives and developing measures and targets contained within this report. Members will also be asked to provide substantive feedback in considering the draft Annual Policing Plan at the PPRC on 14 February 2007 and to consider and agree the final product, following amendments, at Authority meeting on 22 February 2007.

9. The business planning process continues to evolve and will be further developed in subsequent years to achieve its aims. In view of the need to commence planning for next year’s budget round it is essential that lessons learnt from the current round are identified quickly. A ‘lessons learnt’ paper was presented to Management Board on 9 January, and subsequently, a ‘lessons learnt’ report was presented to members at Finance Committee on 18 January.

Development of the strategic objectives, measures and targets

10. This is the second year of the 3-year Policing London Strategy, agreed by the Authority in September 2005, which has set the direction, strategies and priorities for 2006-09. The priorities are:

• Citizen Focus
• Counter terrorism, security and protection
• Safer Neighbourhoods
• Criminal networks
• Capital city policing
• Information quality and access
• Together

11. It has been agreed by both MPS Management Board and the MPA that these strategic priorities will remain the same for 2007/08.

12. The operational objectives, measures and targets are in the process of being revised as appropriate to reflect the progress made in working towards our objectives and the need for improvements in performance and service delivery. Appendix 1 contains the draft objectives, measures and targets (where available) in relation to all of the operational corporate priorities.

13. Citizen Focus, Information Quality and Access and Together have work that is included within the Met Modernisation Programme (MMP), and are included within the 2007/08-delivery plan within the Annual Policing Plan. These are included at Appendix 2.

Critical performance areas (Super 13)

14. During 2006/07, the MPA and MPS identified 13 Critical Performance Areas (CPAs) for improving performance using the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF) scores and the Public Service Agreements. The areas agreed by Management Board on the 31 January 2006 as the critical focus for improved delivery are set out within Appendix 3. Additionally, Appendix 4 provides a short context and commentary on why they were included.

15. Again, the CPAs are not expected to change significantly for 2007/08, as the strategy has remained the same. In terms of Statutory Performance Indicators form the Home Office; the MPS still awaits their definitive plans, following a series of inconclusive meetings.

16. Management Board has discussed a preliminary draft of the CPAs, and further work is in progress, particularly in giving greater emphasis to seriousness and citizen focus.

17. All CPAs will have a member of Management Board accountable for delivery, and the performance of the MPS in these areas will be reported to the PPRC meeting for scrutiny by members.

Territorial Policing: variable target setting process 2007/08

18. Following the success of last year's variable target setting (VTS) process Territorial Policing will use a broadly similar approach to facilitate local BOCU target setting in relation to the basket of ten PSA 1 comparator crimes. The ten crimes include personal robbery, theft from person, theft from a motor vehicle, theft of a motor vehicle, interfering and tampering with a motor vehicle, criminal damage, wounding, common assault, theft of pedal cycle and residential burglary. The MPS has a four-year target to achieve a 19.4% reduction by the end of March 2008 and a current, one-year target of a 6.3% reduction.

Focus of improvement

19. TP will continue to build on the success of Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNTs) with a view to further reducing anti-social behaviour and disorder. SNTs have already played a significant role in building trust and confidence and in increasing local satisfaction.

Next steps

20. The draft Annual Policing Plan, including updated objectives, measures and targets will be presented to members at PPRC on 14 February for substantive discussion.

21. An updated draft Annual Policing Plan and revised measures and targets as appropriate, will then be submitted to the MPA Authority on 22 February 2007.

C. Race and equality impact

It is important that race and equality requirements are reflected in the CPAs, particularly in determining further emphasis around citizen focus performance.

D. Financial implications

There are no specific financial implications arising from this report, although the way in which MPS finances are aligned to delivering the strategic priorities forms the basis for the integrated strategic/financial-planning framework as described in paragraph 1 of this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Angela Emery, Met Modernisation Programme, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 2

Draft delivery plans for Citizen Focus, Information Quality & Access and Together for 2007/08

Appendix 4

Outline of the rationale for the Critical Performance Areas (CPAs)

The CPAs or ‘Super 13’ were agreed by MPS Management Board and the MPA for the 2006/07 planning year. The following is an outline of the rationale for the current CPAs.

The targets have been based on improving the MPS’s PPAF scores - the Home Offices annual assessment of police forces based on Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs) and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s (HMIC) qualitative baseline assessments. There are four grades for performance excellent, good, fair and poor for each SPI and baseline.

Overall satisfaction

Overall satisfaction – SPI 1e looks at the overall satisfaction of victims of domestic burglaries, vehicle crime, robbery & traffic accidents with the police service regarding their incident. SPIs 1a-1d deal with respectively - making contact, action taken, being kept informed of progress in their case and treatment by staff respectively and are reported to PPRC as are all SPIs. The action taken by the police appears to be the main driver behind overall satisfaction – satisfaction with actions in turn is driven by – explaining what is going to happen & why, officers/PCSOs knowing what they are doing and giving practical help.

As there is a need to minimise the number of targets SPI 1e seemed the most appropriate.
The target of 81% is estimated to be what is required to achieve ‘Good’.

Victims of racist crime

This is the same as overall satisfaction except it is a survey of victims of racist incidents and is SPI 3a

BCS comparator basket

The government has set targets for all forces to reduce the recorded crime that mirrors the types of crime picked up in the British Crime Survey, which in the MPS’s case is 19.4%. Thus, the MPS has to reduce the basket by 19.4% starting from 2003/04 by 2007/08. At the moment BCS crime has been reduced by about 5.5% since 2003/04 and the 6.5% target reflects the contribution of 2006/07 to the 19.4% and was set by TP’s variable target setting process.

Violent crime

This is also an SPI 5b which covers violence against the person, sex crimes and robbery. The target is for 5% reduction in the portion (70%) of this crime covered by the BCS basket – see above. There will be two subsidiary measures that will be monitored but will not have targets – violence with injury to focus on the violence where people are hurt and robbery because of its seriousness.

Reduce crime in challenging wards

Challenging wards are those that suffer from higher levels of violent and serious crime and may require significant co-operation from other parts of the MPS. This area is in its infancy and still under development.

Arrest rate for domestic violence incidents where there is a power of arrest

This SPI (8a) is intended to be a prevention measure to show abusers that the police are taking domestic violence seriously. It has been an indicator for a number of years and there was research in the US (Hoyle, C & Sanders, A 2000) suggesting that arrest deterred offenders.

Gun crime

SPI 5e deals with more serious violence. Gun crime is crime enabled by a gun and life threatening covers the offences of homicide, attempted murder and wounding or other act endangering life. The target of 5% refers to 11 specified boroughs and only to gun crime and derived from TP’s variable target setting process for those boroughs.
Specialist Crime Directorate debated a gun crime reduction target for the whole of the MPS in the week commencing the 6 February.

The number of criminal networks disrupted

This measure deals with the disruption of criminal networks. A criminal network is defined as ‘a network of individuals involved in ongoing criminal activity for some form of criminal gain’ (usually profit or gain but can be for social standing). A disruption will have been achieved when a criminal network is unable to operate at its normal level of activities.
% of police officer time spent on front line duties.

This SPI is calculated on the basis of a mixture of activity sampling and counting officers in particular posts. The target for the MPS will also take PCSOs into account. It is important to note that significant improvement in this SPI will require substantial civilianisation to replace officers currently in roles not classified as ‘front line’.

The MPS also report the ‘Operational Policing Measure’ (OPM). This measures the visibility of both MPS officers and police staff and hence includes Scene of Crime Officers and PCSOs. As the OPM better reflects the intentions of the MPA and the MPS in making staff visible to Londoners a target may be set around this as opposed to the SPI regarding police officer time on front line duties.

Using BCS perceptions of anti-social behaviour

This SPI covers much of the work of Safer Neighbourhood teams. Those teams work with communities and local partners to tackle disorder and other forms of anti social behaviour, reduce crime and provide reassurance to their localities'.

It is calculated by asking respondents to select one of four grades (very big problem =3; fairly big problem = 2; not a very big problem = 1 and not a problem at all =0) to show how worried they are about the following:

• noisy neighbours
• teenagers hanging around
• rubbish & litter
• vandalism
• people using/dealing drugs
• people being drunk/rowdy
• abandoned cars

For each respondent the grades are totalled and the percentage of respondents who scored 11 or more is considered to be worried about the level of anti-social behaviour. So the end result is 30% feel there is a high level of anti-social behaviour rather than scores for each of the seven items. Some of the items are not direct police work but could be covered by working with local partners.

The biggest driver for this is being a victim of crime followed by cohesiveness of community – trusting ones’ neighbours, deprivation, and contact with media.

Community confidence measures for counter terrorism

It has been suggested that the MPS develop community confidence measures for counter-terrorism. Development work is ongoing and it is thought that the 1st year will primarily establish a baseline for the MPA. The measure would include questions relating to safety, satisfaction and engagement with respect to Counter-terrorist issues.

Sanction detection rate & offenders brought to justice

This SPI is the major statistic that shows how successful the police are in solving crime. It also is the main driver behind attaining the OBTJ target set for London by the Government for 2006/07.

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