Change to the HMIC inspection methodology

Report: 19
Date: 9 October 2003
By: Clerk

Summary

Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary are changing their methodology in the inspection of police forces by adopting a more strategic approach that also has a greater degree of continuous assessment.

A. Recommendation

That the change in approach is noted and that any comments are forwarded for the consideration of HMIC.

B. Supporting information

1. Following the introduction of the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF), Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary have reviewed their system of inspection and intend to introduce a new approach, known as Baseline Assessment. The new system will begin in the autumn of this year but the exact date for the MPS is still to be decided upon.

Baseline assessment process

2. The process will begin with a team from HMIC visiting the MPS to gather the evidence that will enable the creation of a strategic baseline assessment. The core elements of the assessment will be

• Operational Performance.
• Leadership and Corporate Governance.
• Partnership and Community Engagement.

3. Each of three core elements is subdivided and the gathering of evidence is organised around 23 frameworks, which identify the key issues to be examined. Evidence will be gathered by way of document analysis, interview and other sources, such Best Value Reviews, BCU Inspections, correspondence with local authorities etc. The details of the frameworks are not yet finalised but they are sub divided as follows.

4. The frameworks are designed to be applied in a more strategic and less detailed fashion than the existing functional protocols though it is accepted that evidence gathering across all of these areas will be onerous for the MPS and HMIC alike. However, by frontloading the work in this way, the effort required to maintain and update the assessment, through quarterly visits by HMIC, will be more evenly spread over the 3 year life of the programme. The level of performance revealed by the baseline assessment will be reflected in the level of HMIC engagement over the following 3 years. If it is good, HMIC will apply a light touch; on the other hand, if areas of weakness are identified, future engagement will be more intrusive and the old style functional protocols will form the basis of more detailed inspections.

5. In February 2004, when all the baseline assessments for England and Wales have been drafted, the HMI will moderate them to ensure that they are fair regionally (within HMIC regional offices) and nationally (as between different HMIC offices). It is believed that the moderation process will lead to greater rigour, objectivity and accuracy in baseline assessments.

6. Following moderation, a summary report will be produced. It will be based on a traffic light system (red: yellow: amber: green) and a narrative script. Performance will be graded as follows.

7. The baseline assessments, including that for the MPS, will be published in May 2004. In the five forces where this has been piloted, the police authority have received a table of the traffic light scores together with pages of narrative ranging from six to thirty pages in length. The assessment is also given in the context of each Force’s ‘most similar’ family for comparison. For the MPS this likely to be Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, Merseyside Police and West Yorkshire Police.

Police authority involvement

8. The Authority will be initially involved at the evidence gathering stage when HMIC staff will wish to interview members and officers. However, we need not simply respond to the questions of the HMIC team; it is an opportunity for members to place on the agenda any particular subjects which they feel deserve greater recognition or merit closer inspection. The format is likely to be that the HMIC team will offer one or two dates when they can meet jointly with all who are able to participate. Some police authorities decide upon specific members to meet HMIC. For previous MPS inspections, all members have been given the opportunity to attend but as a minimum we should aim to have present the chair, vice chair or lead member for each the twenty three framework subjects. This meeting will likely be in October or November.

9. Unlike previous HMIC inspections, the members of police authorities participating in the pilot baseline assessments, were not given the opportunity of accompanying the HMIC team when meeting staff. However, the HMIC process should not be regarded as finalised and our initial meeting will offer the opportunity for any issues to be negotiated.

10. In March 2004, following the moderation of the baseline assessment, HMIC will meet with the MPA and MPS to discuss the findings. This affords the opportunity of influencing the moderated assessment but will require clear evidence to be presented for change to be agreed.

Baseline assessment and the planning process

11. After the baseline assessment is published in Spring 2004 regular engagement with HMIC will ensure a valid annual assessment of MPS performance. The difficulty with assessments produced in the spring is that they are too late to inform and influence the Authority’s annual policing plan; to correct this, in autumn 2004, the baseline assessments will be recast using the PPAF domains as an additional measure. Thereafter they will be produced annually in the autumn.

Baseline assessment and PPAF

12. There is a need to reconcile and integrate the performance assessments produced by BA and PPAF. The emerging view is that they are largely complementary but the following propositions apply.

PPAF deals in quantitative data that should speak for itself……….
PPAF is predicated on the view that it is desirable and feasible to describe performance by employing a set of relevant measures that will highlight key trends, differences or questions that will lead to improvements.

…..and whilst PPAF data will not always be sufficient
However there are areas where the subject area is not amenable to quantitative measure (e.g. leadership) or when the data has little explanatory value (e.g. strategic direction). In these circumstances other diagnostic tools, contextual information or professional judgement will be necessary to rate performance and learn lessons; HMIC will likely fill this role.

…….. it will ultimately have the lead in performance assessment
As PPAF develops, performance will be increasingly informed by objective quantitative data rather than subjective professional judgement (which would make any intervention by the Police Standards Unit more difficult to challenge). This will lead to clearer assessments of performance and eliminate performance reports where the real message has to be ‘discerned’ (see Appendix1).

Issues for consideration

Openness and transparency

13. It is not yet clear how much of the report will be allowed into the public domain. It seems likely that headline findings will be acceptable but there are obvious dangers around oversimplified comparisons between Forces, especially as the assessment awarded to each core element will require some probing for it to be understood properly. For example, a core element may be assessed at yellow –‘heading in right direction’ – but this will be the composite of a number of sub elements which may be a mixture of green and red assessments. The baseline process does not weight any of the sub elements so a core element with an apparently acceptable assessment may contain a red (serious weakness) in respect of an important topic.

Police authority involvement

14. There have been calls from some police authorities for them to be included as part of the baseline process whilst others have resisted such a move. HMIC take the view that if they inspected police authorities they would have to be a position to help them afterwards and they do not have the resources for that at the moment. To an extent the discussion is academic as several frameworks include references to the police authority and many of the questions could be interpreted as testing the extent to which the authority is fulfilling its statutory responsibilities. When HMIC staff examine police authority documents, or interview members and officers, they will be doing so to gather evidence about the performance of the MPS. Any observations or recommendations that reflect the way the Authority discharges its duties will be advisory, except for Best Value where HMIC has a statutory inspection duty under the Local Government Act 1999.

Local context and priorities

15. Though not a particular problem for London, the process should have the capacity to recognise and accept local as opposed to national priorities and circumstances.

C. Equality and diversity implications

None.

D. Financial implications

None.

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: Keith Dickinson, MPA.

For more information contact:

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

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