Commissioner's report

Report: 5
Date: 26 March 2009
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report prepared for the Authority meeting, summarises the progress of the Metropolitan Police Service against the objectives featured in the 2008 – 2011 Policing Plan for London.

The report covers the periods January 2009 and February 2009 with data for individual measures reflecting the 12-month period ending January 2009 unless stated otherwise. It is intended to highlight progress against corporate targets and identifies key operational activities that deliver a safer city for all London’s communities.

Report headlines can be summarised as follows:

• Serious acquisitive crime rate (robbery, residential burglary and motor vehicle crime) is at its lowest level in any rolling 12 month period for 10 years. The current offence levels for burglary are, however, at a historical low and will prove challenging to sustain.
• Knife crime during April to January 2009 shows a 13.7% reduction (1,633 fewer offences) compared with the corresponding period in 2007/08.
• Between April 2008 and January 2009 there were 1,914 fewer youth (under 20 years old) victims of crime than in the corresponding period in 2007/08. The number of youth homicide victims (aged 10-19) is down to 18 from 23 compared to the same period in 2007/08.
• Rape offences have increased by 18.5% in the 12 months to January 2009 compared with the previous rolling 12 month period. Domestic violence offences have also increased by 4.7% over the same period.
• Overall police officer numbers along with female and Black and Minority Ethnic officers are the highest ever recorded.
• Building public confidence in our service and increasing the satisfaction of victims of crime continues to be a challenge

A. Recommendation

The report be received.

B. Supporting information

1. This report updates progress against the corporate objectives featured in the Policing Plan for London. For each objective we summarise progress to date and report on key initiatives. For ease of reference a summary table giving an overview of performance is attached at Appendix 1 with a green (G), amber (A), red (R) assessment against the Critical Performance Areas (CPAs) under each objective.

2. The report will begin to reflect the priorities for the next few years that I referred to in my presentation to members at the Full Authority meeting on 26 February which are to;

• Reduce crime and catch criminals, including meeting the challenges of the recession
• Listen to what people are telling us and keep our promises, as set out in the Policing Pledge
• Be intolerant to all forms of violence, and
• Maintain the security of our streets with increased visibility and engagement

3. These priorities will be delivered through the presence of officers in our communities, performance in improving public safety and confidence, productivity in the effective and efficient use of resources, professionalism in taking personal responsibility for our action and pride in policing, in our uniform and in service delivery.

Our delivery: performance and activity

Objective: Make our services more accessible and improve people’s experience of their contact with us, especially victims and witnesses.

How we monitor our performance

4. We monitor our progress against this objective via two Critical Performance Areas [CPA] measures (see below). Both measures are statutory performance indicators [SPI] derived from a comprehensive survey of service users conducted by an independent market research company. The survey takes place on a continuous basis and captures recent experiences of victims of burglary, violent crime, vehicle crime, road traffic collisions and racist incidents.

Progress summary

• The latest results show that victim satisfaction with our overall service has improved by 1% point to 77.8% for the year to December 2008. However victim satisfaction remains below our year end target and has remained broadly steady over the past two years.
• The satisfaction gap between white and minority ethnic victims at 4.8 points is close to the national average and the focus of ongoing research by the Home Office, NPIA and MPS to gain a greater understanding of the key drivers of satisfaction amongst different user groups.
• A paper providing more in depth analysis of the satisfaction gap, and on the work being done to close the gap, will be presented to the MPA Strategic and Operational Policing Committee in April.

5. The MPS has established a Victims and Witnesses Group led by Operation Emerald. This group has a wide remit to develop and disseminate good practice in relation to improving the service provided to victims and witnesses. They have a particular focus on turning the research undertaken by the MPS and the NPIA into tactical activities that will close the satisfaction gap between white and black and minority ethnic service users.

Recent initiatives

6. In developing the services described in its policing pledge, the MPS has provided a number of commitments that will improve accessibility to services. These include;

• Answering emergency calls within 10 seconds and non-emergency calls within 30 seconds. While we are achieving this in over 90% of cases there is work to do in ensuring that callers are given a realistic time of arrival and that resources are matched appropriately to call demand
• Offering an appointment, to suit the caller, where a more immediate police response is not required. This already occurs on some boroughs but the challenge will be to ensure that this happens across London and that MPS performance against this can be effectively monitored.

7. An advertising campaign to promote the national policing pledge commenced on 2 March. The campaign will raise awareness of the services that all forces will provide and will encourage the public to become more involved in developing services. The national campaign will compliment borough initiatives that will provide details of how people can access their services.

Objective: Make our neighbourhoods safer through local and city-wide problem solving and partnership working to reduce crime, anti-social behaviour and road casualties

How we monitor our performance

8. The primary measure for this objective is public confidence through a statutory performance indicator measured independently via the Home Office’s British Crime Survey (BCS) (glossary of terms is attached at Appendix 2). The BCS is a long established continuous survey of UK residents conducted face-to-face in people’s homes. The limitations are that respondents are aged 17 and above and it does not capture business crime.

9. In addition to public confidence, progress is monitored using Home Office Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs) focused on the underlying serious acquisitive crime rate and our associated investigation performance – namely the number of offenders brought to justice. Additionally, to assess the safety of our roads network across the capital, the MPS use a very specific SPI - a count of the number of people killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions relative to the number of vehicle kilometres travelled. This measure enables the Home Office to compare and contrast performance across forces with different traffic densities.

Progress summary

• The latest results show confidence in local policing now stands at 54.2% [year to Sept 2008] below the year-end target of 56.2%. The MPS leads its Home Office Most Similar Family (MSF) group and is 15th out of the 42 police force areas in England and Wales. Considerable effort is being applied to improve this performance and a detailed update was provided to the Strategic and Operational Policing Committee on 5 February.
• Serious acquisitive crime is on a long term improving trend and is now at its lowest level in any rolling 12 month period since the year to March 1999. We are currently on-track to deliver against our year-end target of a 4 percent year-on-year reduction.
• For the rolling year to January the sanction detection rate for serious acquisitive crime was 10.8%, below our 2008/9 target of 11.8%. Meeting this target represents a significant challenge in the final two months of this financial year.

Recent initiatives

Operation Spotlight

10. Residential burglary is currently at a reduction of 0.8% (453 fewer offences) for the 12 months to January 2009 compared with the previous rolling 12 months. Since the start of Operation Spotlight in November 2008 there have been over 2,100 arrests for residential burglary and the current MPS detection rate for residential burglary is 13.2%.

11. Burglary has fallen steadily over the last 10 years from 78,706 offences in 1999/2000 to 59,837 offences in 2007/08, a reduction of approximately 24%, although the rate of change has moderated in more recent years. One of our challenges is to ensure that the successes and learning from Operation Spotlight are embedded in the way we work and are sustainable.

12. In the short term, there will be financial support to enable the continued deployment of corporate assets on the most challenged boroughs, using a combination of tactics including the Territorial Support Group to target and disrupt current active offenders for residential burglary.

13. The introduction of an initial visit by an investigator to all residential burglary victims, followed up by a visit from a Safer Neighbourhood Team officer has been highlighted as good practice. Burglary victims are seeing forensic practitioners earlier at the scene and feel more valued as a result. This victim focus strategy will be maintained and should impact positively on victim satisfaction with the service provided.

Central Operations ‘Status Dog Unit’

14. This new unit was launched on 2 March to address the huge increase in dogs being used irresponsibly and being linked to anti-social behaviour. The unit will concentrate efforts in and around Operation Blunt Tier One Boroughs to tackle the possession of prohibited dogs that are being bred, fought and are used to cause fear within local communities.

Objective: Reduce serious violence and protect young people

How we monitor our performance

15. Performance is monitored against this objective using a combination of Home Office SPIs and internal MPS metrics. The SPIs also feature within the new national Assessment of Policing and Community Safety framework (APACS) introduced in April 2008.

Progress summary

16. The MPS are making steady progress against all the serious crime reduction measures

• Most Serious Violence and Assault With Injury reduced by 2.7% (1,952 offences) over the rolling year to January 2009.
• Against the new Home Office gun crime definition, we have seen a year-on-year reduction of 23.7% (689 offences) as at the end of January 2009. This reduction has been achieved through a series of proactive initiatives including intelligence-led interventions at identified hot spots.
• The combined sanction detection rate for most serious violence and serious sexual offences is 32.0% for the rolling year to January 2009.
• The Domestic Violence offences resulting in arrest for the rolling year to January 2009 is 70.3%, on track for our target this year of 67%.
• For the period April to January 2009, the number of under 20 year olds becoming victims of violence decreased by 10.1% (1,914 victims) compared to the corresponding period in 2007. (Rolling year comparisons are not possible due to a change of measure definition by the Home Office). This is ahead of the year-end target of a 6% reduction.

Recent initiatives

Investigating rape

17. A report was submitted to the Communities, Equalities and People Committee on 12 March setting out steps being taken to improve the investigation of rape, which has shown a 18.5% increase in offences for the 12 month period to January 2009. Due to the work of specialist teams such as Borough based Sapphire teams there is greater public confidence to report the offence to police but the increase nevertheless gives rise to concern.

18. Following an internal review, the MPS Management Board has taken the decision in principle that responsibility for the investigation of rape and serious sexual offences will transfer to Specialist Crime Directorate. An implementation team is being formed to take this forward with full consultation with partners. A report on this is scheduled for the Strategic and Operational Policing Committee in May.

Operation Blunt 2

19. Knife crime shows a 13.7% reduction between April and January 2008/09 compared with the same period in 2007/08. This equates to 1,633 fewer violent crimes involving knives. The number of youth victims of violence has declined by 10.2% in the period between April 2008 and January 2009 when compared with the same period the previous year. This equates to some 2,034 fewer youth victims of violence.

20. The post-school deployments of borough and Transport OCU officers that commenced in January have proved successful and are scheduled to continue until 3 April. These protective deployments deliver a guaranteed, visible and familiar police presence to prevent and detect violence impacting young people. In the period between 5 and 30 January, youth victims of violence in this after school period (3pm – 6pm) declined by 21% (403 to 318) compared with the same period in January 2008.

Operation Strobe

21. This is a proactive initiative to combat gun and gang violence. Using the most recent intelligence, Strobe is deployed to ward level to support boroughs with specific gun crime issues. They act in support of unarmed colleagues to target known offenders where the intelligence supports an intervention. The project has already been piloted on Lambeth, Southwark and Hackney boroughs. As well as acting as an additional specialist resource, the enhanced visibility provided by the Armed Response vehicles has also delivered an enhanced level of reassurance both to unarmed officers and the community.

Operation Faidella

22. Following an investigation by Operation Trident, on 6 February Kenneth Spence pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the attempted murder in June 2008 of Police Sergeant Robert Huddlestone from Essex Police, the shooting of another man and possession of a shotgun, which was successfully recovered.

Objective: Disrupt more criminal networks and reduce the harm caused by drugs

How we monitor our performance

23. In the absence of nationally defined SPIs, we monitor our performance using a combination of internal measures.

Progress summary

• Good progress is being made in disrupting criminal networks – achieving over 30 disruptions each month through the deployment of proactive teams acting on intelligence.
• The MPS are above target for the number of cases where assets are seized. The value of assets identified by court order for seizure for the period Apr’08 – Jan’09 was an average of £3.6 m per month.
• The number of sanction detections for trafficking shows a small increase on the corresponding period last year. For the 12 months to January 2009 the MPS achieved 2,585 sanction detections for Class A drug trafficking, against 2,404 for the year to January 2008.
• For the 12 months to January 2009 there has been an improvement in sanction detections for cocaine and heroin individually (monthly averages of 143 and 57 respectively) compared to the corresponding period ending January 2008

Recent initiatives

24. During February SCD Stolen Vehicle Unit had several successes following long and complex operations. Operation Goyt was an investigation into the supply of ‘ringing kits’ for stolen motor vehicles to organised criminal networks across London. The two suspects were involved in assisting and facilitating the re-identification of £38 million worth of stolen vehicles. Operation Aachen investigated four East London criminals who were stealing high value vehicles from London and the surrounding counties. In both cases, the suspects all pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in March.

Objective: Enhance our counter terrorism capability and capacity

How we monitor our performance

25. The MPS continues to report its performance in relation to counter-terrorism to the MPA/MPS Counter Terrorism Protective Services Sub-committee (previously CT Oversight Committee), chaired by Lord Toby Harris. The next meeting of this group is on 26 March 2009. Internally reports are also regularly provided to MPS Performance Board.

Progress summary

26. Specialist Operations (SO) business group currently has four separate commands: Counter Terrorism (SO15), Specialist Protection (SO1), Royalty Protection (SO14) and Protective Security/ Headquarters Support (SO2). There is shortly to be a major change with the addition of three units being transferred from Central Operations to Specialist Operations. These are the Diplomatic Protection Group (SO16), the Palace of Westminster (SO17) and Aviation Security OCU (SO18).

27. Protective security focus is currently on the events surrounding the G20 Summit meeting on 2 April. SO2 Security Coordinators, SO1 Specialist Protection, SO15 Counter Terrorism Command and SO2’s counter-terrorism tactical deployments will respond to this event. It is assessed that the combination of environmental, anti-capitalist and international protest issues including the recession will provide an extensive challenge to protective security in the capital.

28. Two significant trials are currently under way. The ‘Airline plot’ investigated under Operation Overt retrial commenced on 24 February at Woolwich Crown Court. Eight men are charged with conspiring together and with others to murder persons unknown by detonation of improvised explosive devices on transatlantic passenger aircraft in 2006. Five of them are also charged with conspiring with others to murder persons unknown.

29. Three men are currently on trial at Kingston Crown Court charged with conspiring with the four 7/7 bombers and others in the bomb attacks on the London transport network. Two of them are also charged with knowingly attending terrorist training.

30. SO staff along with Foreign and Commonwealth Office representatives accompanied Binyam Mohammed on his return from Guantanomo Bay to the UK on 23 February. After interview by UK Borders Agency and SO15 staff, he was advised by SO15 contact officers and released into the custody of his family and legal team.

Other recent initiatives include;

31. A new DVD publicising counter-terrorism intelligence-gathering operations is now available to police personnel. The DVD dramatises terrorist activity and the MPS role in intelligence gathering against this threat. The DVD is being distributed across the MPS via the Counter Terrorism leads and Focus Desks.

Objective: Plan for, and effectively police, major events in London and prepare for the 2012 Olympics

How we monitor our performance

32. There are no SPIs for this corporate objective, which in itself is linked to the wider milestones for delivering the national Olympic Security Programme that goes beyond policing and are the responsibility of the Home Secretary. The Olympic Security Directorate reports on progress for this planning to the Director of Olympic Safety and Security in the Home Office. The MPA maintain oversight of the MPS involvement.

Progress summary

33. There are four critical performance areas against which progress against the delivery programme is being measured.

• ‘Meeting the Demand’ strategic options for delivering the gap. A paper of costed options of how the identified gap between supply and demand will be met, is incorporated within the Costed Security plan draft delivered in October. Draft completed.
• Beijing Security learning. Olympic Security Directorate has delivered a final debrief report with lessons learned. The official LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) official security debrief is still awaited.
• OGC Gateway 0 Programme Strategic Assessment. OGC (Office of Government Commerce) review of the programme in October 2008 moved the programme to Red/Amber from a rating of Red. On Target
• Costed Security Strategy (CSS) delivery. The strategy was well received by ministers on 25 February and a written ministerial statement is awaited.

Recent key events

34. On Friday 13 February, CO 18 Aviation Security officers responded to a full plane crash emergency at London City Airport. As the plane containing 67 passengers and 5 crew landed, the front landing gear collapsed causing the nose of the aircraft to drop to the ground. Police officers worked closely alongside the other emergency services to ensure a safe evacuation of the aircraft and there were only four passengers who received minor injuries.

Our organisation: managing the business

Our People

35. Police officer strength has increased to 32,018, the highest police officer strength ever recorded. The projected strength by the end of March is 32,500 with the 2009/10 budget supporting further growth to 33,283. Female police officer strength has increased to 7,080 (22.1%) the highest ever recorded, while BME police officer strength has increased to 2,774 (8.7%) the highest percentage ever recorded.

36. PCSO strength currently stands at 4,483 and recruitment projections indicate an increased end of year strength of around 4,700 including the phased rollout of Operation Tyrol. We are well placed to complete the Tyrol rollout by the due date, June 2009.

37. Personal Security Vetting Group have improved their performance with regard to Force vetting. They now complete 95% of vetting applications for people looking to join the MPS within the 35 day Service Level Agreement. This has improved from 19% and exceeds the 80% target. This significant improvement has greatly assisted HR Directorate to meet recruitment targets and deadlines.

Our other resources

38. The MPS together with the MPA is raising awareness of internal fraud within the MPS, as part of continuing work to ensure effective corporate governance is in place. A joint training programme has been developed which is being run in conjunction with the Audit Commission and has been aimed at specific groups of staff. The Audit Commission has commenced the delivery of a series of half day workshops for identified staff.

39. The four year responsible procurement plan was approved by the MPA in January as an integral part of the Mayor’s Economic Recovery Action Plan for London, also announced in January. An initiative in support of the Mayor’s plan is a project to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) through early payment of invoices either within 10 working days or, at least, earlier than the current 30 days payment terms.

C. Race and equality impact

There are no specific race and equality implications arising directly from this report. However, there are key areas of specific activity in relation to equalities that demonstrate our commitment to diversity and are essential to the success of the MPS. These include improving the quality of service provided to victims of hate crime, ensuring that a consistent and effective service is provided to London’s diverse communities; improving performance against domestic violence, ensuring a consistent level of service across all communities and minimising disproportionality issues; increasing community trust and confidence in the police use of stop and search ensuring it is used fairly and proportionately; continuing to develop a workforce that reflects the diversity of London and improving the progression of women within the police service.

D. Financial implications

There are no financial implications arising directly from this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author(s): Michael Debens, Director of Business Strategy, MPS

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 2

Glossary of terms

APACS

Assessment of Policing and Community Safety – performance management framework which will provide the Home Office and its partners with the capability to monitor and assess performance in policing and community safety

BCS

British Crime Survey – a long established Home Office managed survey designed to capture levels of crime and public attitudes to crime as well as other criminal justice issues. The results play an important role in informing Government policy. The survey captures the views of approximately 48,000 citizens across England & Wales annually – approximately 3,000 within London. Survey results are published quarterly and relate to a rolling 12-month period.

CPA

Critical Performance Areas - the suite of MPS corporate measures used to track progress against the delivery of corporate objectives

Criminal network

a network of individuals involved in ongoing criminal activity for some form of personal gain (usually profit, but can also be for social standing).

Disruption

a disruption has been achieved when a network is unable to operate at its normal level of activity for a significant amount of time.

Harm

where the consequence of pursuing an activity is seen to have an adverse effect on the social, physical or economic well being of individuals or a community.

OGC

Office of Government Commerce

SD

Sanction detection - police generated detections of a crime. SDs include charges, cautions, fixed penalty notices [FPN], taken into considerations [TIC], summons and cannabis warnings

Serious acquisitive

Includes residential robbery, burglary and motor vehicle crime

SPI

Statutory Performance Indicator

TIC

Taken into consideration – the clear up of multiple crimes attributable committed by one criminal e.g. multiple burglaries

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