Central Communications Command: equality and diversity

Report: 4
Date: 10 February 2011
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an update on developments in the area of Equality and Diversity within Central Communications Command (CCC). It will specifically provide information in the following areas:

• A brief overview of the role of CCC
• Outlines initiatives within CCC to support and engage a diverse workforce and describes how it engages the wider community it serves
• Outlines major challenges and successes in relation to equality and diversity within CCC from the perspectives of both the MPS as a service provider and an employer.
• Provides an overview on the satisfaction of users with CCC services
• Provides an update on the equality and diversity issues mentioned within the 27 March 2009 report and its resulting minutes
• Provides an overview of potential issues from any proposed repositioning of Integrated Borough Operations (IBO) functionality within CCC.

A. Recommendation

That

1. Members are invited to take note of the contents of this report and the areas of work around Equality and Diversity being undertaken within CCC.

B. Supporting information

Overview of the role of Central Communications Command

1. CCC was formed in January 2008 on completion of the C3i programme. This saw public telephone contact and control of deployment of uniform policing in London move from a central Information Room at New Scotland Yard, 32 local control rooms and three independent Telephone Operator Centres (TOC) to three purpose built contact and deployment centres at Lambeth, Hendon and Bow.

2. CCC now operates within the Public Contact Portfolio of Territorial Policing (TP) as a single Operational Command Unit (OCU) located at three sites under the leadership of a Chief Superintendent, and overseen strategically by an ACPO Commander.

3. CCC currently has an establishment of 1971. This is includes 1682 police staff and 289 police officers. This number reflects a reduction from 2009 of 105 Communications Officers to achieve savings of just over £5 million. The balance of ‘officers vs. staff’ was reviewed in June 2010 and found to be the optimum level to provide command experience, policing experience, and operational resilience at times of industrial action (as tested in February and March 2010). This reduction was achieved through the surrender of vacant posts with a business rationale that CCC was achieving satisfactory performance with all of these vacancies so these savings could be made. As there was no direct impact to staff or change of policy there was no EIA completed. There has been no impact apparent on staff at CCC and performance has continued to improve.

4. 358 (18%) of officers and staff are in supervisory roles ranging from first line supervisor through to OCU Commander.

5. CCC is represented by a significantly diverse workforce. A summary of the diversity of the workforce is set out below.

• 1161 (59%) of officers and staff are female.
• 162 (45%) of supervisors are female.
• 476 (24%) of officers and staff describe themselves as BME.
• 43 (12%) of supervisors describe themselves as BME.
• 381 (20%) of staff declared a religious belief. The highest were Church of England (147), Roman Catholic (80), other Christian (63) and Islam (25).
• 26 (1.5%) of officers and staff are recorded as having a disability.
• 436 (22%) of staff are under 30yrs of age; 690 (35%) between 30yrs and 40yrs; 565 (29%) between 40yrs and 50yrs; 242 (12%) between 50yrs and 60yrs; 38 (2%) are over 60yrs.

6. Having only 12% of supervisors who describe themselves as BME is a challenge for the OCU as this is not in line with the overall diversity breakdown of the OCU. This was raised in the 2009 report to the committee and has proved a very difficult issue to address. The new mentoring and work based assessment programme for promotion to Communications Supervisor is designed to address this with direct encouragement of underrepresented staff to apply.

7. CCC handles 1) all emergency and non emergency telephony for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) 2) co-ordinates the despatch of initial response to incidents for Borough Operational Command Units (BOCU) 3) provides command and control infrastructure for major incident and events policing through the Special Operations Room (SOR) and 4) Command and control for critical incidents.

8. In the current performance year, April 2010 to November 2010, CCC has dealt with:

• more than 1.4 million emergency telephone calls through the 999 system answering 90.6% on average within 10 seconds.
• 2 million non emergency telephone calls answering 92.8% on average within 30 seconds.
• handled, on average, 20 calls through the ‘typetalk’ and 2 calls on the new SMS services for the deaf or hard of hearing every day.
• handled a total of 16,186 calls using the ‘Language Line’ interpreting service. 13,000 of these were on the 999 system.
• CCC managed the response to 1.3 million emergency incidents during this period.
• 81.3% of those requiring an ‘immediate’ response saw police attendance within 12 minutes.
• 88.4% of those requiring a ‘significant’ response saw police attendance within 60 minutes.
• CCC managed the attendance at 50,000 scheduled appointments, meeting 87% within half an hour of the agreed time.

User Satisfaction with CCC services

9. User satisfaction for CCC is directly measured as part of the MPS User Satisfaction Service. This engages a total of 18000 MPS victims of crime throughout the year on a quarterly basis and as part of its questioning it deals with satisfaction levels in relation to initial contact in both emergency and non emergency telephony.

10. The following provides a summary of user satisfaction levels for initial contact with CCC as reported in the recent survey in September 2010.

• Overall satisfaction with initial contact via the 999 system is currently at 94.9% having risen from 90.5% in September 2009.
• Overall satisfaction with initial contact via the non emergency system is currently at 96.4% having risen from 94.3% in September 2009.
• Satisfaction for non-emergency calls from respondents who describe themselves as white was 94% and from respondents who describe themselves as BME was 93%.
• Satisfaction for 999 emergency calls from respondents who describe themselves as white was 94% and from respondents who describe themselves as BME was 89%.

11. There are no specific questions within the USS that deal with levels of satisfaction with typetalk, the SMS system or Language Line. CCC is currently working with the MPS Strategic Research and Analysis Unit
(SRAU) to review the questions within the survey to specifically encourage feedback from users of these services.

12. The satisfaction gap between BME and White users of the 999 system is significant and has persisted. CCC is working with the SRAU to use the USS to try and establish why this occurs so appropriate action can be taken to remedy this. The reasons for this difference are not known at this time.

Equality and Diversity Initiatives within CCC

13. In December 2009 CCC launched its Equality and Diversity panel with aims and objectives in line with the MPS strategy, namely to deliver fair and responsive policing, develop engagement with all communities, develop workforce and culture and ensure governance and performance management.

14. The panel is chaired by the OCU Commander and has wide membership including senior management from across CCC. Three practitioner leads act as ‘champions’ from within the workforce to lead working groups carrying out activity under all of the strands.

15. The panel includes representation from Staff Associations, Police Federation, Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate and significantly an independent member from the CCC Community Consultative Forum (CCF).

16. The panel meets quarterly in order to direct and progress the equality activity for the OCU. It agrees areas of work to be led by the champions and provides support and authorisation as required. In addition, it monitors and evaluates progress against strategy.

17. The panel ensures that CCC supports and progresses the Equality Standard for the Police Service (ESPS) in the work of the OCU. It actively plots progress against the framework in three action plans dealing with fair and responsive policing, developing engagement with all communities, and developing workforce and culture.

18. One key strand of activity has seen the introduction of a Service Improvement Panel (SIP) to support engagement with staff to deliver improvements in both ‘fair and responsive services’ and ‘workforce and culture.’ This group of eight staff members meets regularly with the diversity champions and has been responsible for delivering a number of key initiatives.

19. In April 2010 the CCC Skills Bank was started as a result of work by the Service Improvement Panel. This records the talents and skills of staff so they can be utilised in the development of CCC. This has led to staff with project management, language and administrative skills working in support of projects outside of their normal areas of work.

20. The SIP was also instrumental in allowing CCC to lead on developing the first work based assessment (WBA) programme to support promotion from Band ‘E’ Communications Officer to Band ‘D’. Working with the MPS WBA office, the first promotion process for police staff commenced in January 2011. This is supported with a mentoring program for applicants. A central OCU selection panel with independent CCF oversight ensures the best talent is harnessed as leaders for the future. This scheme has been advertised actively to encourage staff from diverse backgrounds to apply and a key objective is to ensure equality of opportunity for all. The WBA applications are underway with a closing date at the end of February and there are currently 20 applicants for the mentoring programme with 6 (30%) describing themselves as BME.

21. In the first three months of 2010, all first and second line managers undertook two days development training. This programme was led by the MPS Leadership Academy in conjunction with the Diversity Directorate and CCC training department. The objectives were to develop managers across a range of areas including the application of ‘soft skills’ to equip them with the interpersonal skills to deal with sensitive issues such as attendance management fairly and robustly. In addition, a key objective was to raise awareness of diversity issues and equip them to deal with difficult issues in a sensitive way while ensuring MPS policy is applied and service delivery maintained. Feedback from supervisors was overwhelmingly positive.

22. External scrutiny of our progress in relation to training is critical. In August 2010 an independent member of the CCF, who by career is a training manager within London Underground, conducted a review of diversity training for communications officers and reported his findings back to panel and the wider CCF. His findings were favourable and commended the standard and level of training as well as making practical suggestions around training issues, which have been incorporated into the development programme.

23. CCC also actively promotes and monitors Computer Based Training (CBT) that is delivered through the National Centre for Applied Learning Technology (NCALT). This is a key performance measure and currently 89% of CCC staff members have completed this training.

24. CCC recently completed the recruitment and training of 18 LGBT Liaison Officers. This work was led by a Band D Communications Supervisor with the support of the SIP, the CCF and the Equality Panel. The two days of training involved a plethora of support agencies relating to LGBT issues such as Broken Rainbows charity working against domestic violence as well as direct involvement of the chair of the MPS LGBT Independent Advisory Group.

25. The liaison officers are now actively involved in developing MPS and CCC processes to provide a better service to members of the LGBT community. To date their work has led to the looking at location based comments on the command and control system for areas associated with LGBT venues or Public Sex Environments to help communications recognise potential ‘hate crimes’ and apply the appropriate response. They review incidents relating to LGBT victims with a view to ensuring a sensitive response and providing feedback to communications officer where required.

26. Internally the LGBT liaison officers are also supporting staff from the LGBT community. A week of events to mark LGBT history month in February 2011 is being planned, culminating in a film and debate night to raise awareness of issues of domestic violence in the LGBT community.

27. Another Band D Communication Supervisor has recently taken on the lead for developing work on issues relating to women at CCC. As with the LGBT work the SIP and equality panel will support her to develop and promote activity to identify and remedy issues affecting women, both as service users and members of staff. Proposals are expected to be brought before the CCC Equality panel in March 2011.

28. CCC hosted the AGM of the MPS Deaf Group in June 2010 and used this as an opportunity to both promote the SMS system (see paragraphs 30 - 32), and engage with deaf and hearing impaired MPS staff to learn from their experience. This has promoted wider awareness among MPS staff within the deaf and partial hearing communities.

29. A member of the SIP is developing a learning program related to mental health. The objective is to establish how CCC can better meet victim and caller needs, and then improve the service that is given. This work is set to report to the Equality panel with recommendations in March 2011.

30. Operational planning processes have been adapted to take into account cultural and diversity related issues. As well as dealing with the demand for service brought about by wider public events such as protests or football matches the CCC Operational planning team now assesses the likely impact of cultural, religious and diversity related events to ensure that the needs of any specific communities are taken into account and specific demands identified and planned for. In effect, a dynamic and independent assessment is applied to CCC services for pre-planned events to take account of diversity related issues as well as operational requirements.

31. An example of this in practice has been during the Jewish High Holy days. The Jewish Police Association were consulted to provide dedicated briefings for all operational staff so they would recognise the significance of key days, and understand the impact on members of the Jewish community who had to call police on one of these days, so that any response can be appropriately tailored to the persons needs.

32. CCC is currently looking at ways that learning can be exported across the wider MPS and officers from other OCUs are attending the March CCC Equality and Diversity Board to look at good practice.

Update on introduction of Emergency SMS system

33. In September 2009 the MPS became one of the first forces to enter into the trial of Emergency SMS services for people who are deaf, hard of hearing or have impaired speech. This system operates through a registration process with RNID and the process has been sponsored DCLG and British Telecom is the system operator. Whilst this is still a trial, a full business case is under development by DCLG to ensure long term use. It is anticipated that the service will be rolled out as permanent by the end of 2011. This service is available through www.emergencysms.org.uk.

34. The system allows those who have pre-registered to use SMS to access emergency services assistance with calls being filtered through to the relevant emergency service. 5,500 people have registered for the system with an average of 5 messages to the system nationally each day.

35. CCC continues to offer the text relay service and accepts contacts through direct email. There is currently no plan to extend the SMS system for non emergency calls as SMS uses "store and forward" technology that does not allow a two way conversation between the caller and police. Passing SMS messages back and forth is therefore likely to fail, resulting in frustration to the customer.

Development of Community Consultative Forum

36. Extensive work has continued to establish an effective community scrutiny group for CCC over the past year. This has been developed in consultation with the London Communities Policing Partnership (LCP2) along the lines of a Community Engagement Group. The group is known as the CCC Community Consultative Forum.

37. The CCF meets every two months holding meeting at each of the three centres. The group now has 27 members representing the London Boroughs of Havering, Richmond, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, Barnet, Bromley, Camden, Haringey, Lewisham, Westminster, Waltham Forest, Merton, Brent, Bexley, Greenwich and Harrow as well as Faith Groups, Policing & Community Safety boards and the British Transport Police Advisory Group. An open day and conference is planned for 10 March 2011 to encourage wider representation.

38. The group has the following agreed terms of reference:

• Promote trust and confidence in policing London
• Provide a forum for consultation, critical appraisal and evaluation of the policing service operated by CCC from representatives of local communities.
• Support CCC to become more responsive to the diverse needs of Communities in London.
• Provide a link between local CPEGs, Consultative Groups and Independent advisory groups to the strategic and tactical direction of CCC in policing London.

39. As well as scrutinising CCC performance and exploring issues such as sickness management members of the group now attend key management meetings to provided advice, guidance and independence. These include the monthly performance meeting, the Equality & Diversity panel, the Confidence, Satisfaction and Standards meeting as well as members becoming involved in training and selection as described in paragraph 20 and 42.

Changes to demographic profile & representation within Fairness at Work (FAW) and misconduct at CCC

40. The diversity demographic profile for CCC has remained broadly similar over the past year. This has been despite:

• a reduction of 105 communications officer posts to meet financial savings
• a freeze on external recruitment and
• CCC being 35 police officers short of establishment.

41. The under representation of BME staff at supervisor level remains an area of focus, and a work based assessment process for promotion to supervisor was launched in January 2011. This actively encourages applications from BME staff through targeted advertising of the opportunity. In addition there is a mentoring scheme for all staff to encourage development. In order to ensure that the best candidates are picked in a transparent way the selection process is being conducted with involvement of the independent CCF. If successful this can be assessed as a process for promotion of police staff elsewhere in the MPS.

42. The representation of BME and female staff, as well as the broad spread of age groups among the workforce is encouraging and CCC seeks to ensure this is maintained. This will remain a significant organisational challenge in the years ahead.

43. During the last year there have been 57 formal misconduct cases involving police staff at CCC. 37 (65%) of cases were non BME officers and staff, 17 (30%) of cases were BME officers and staff and 3 (5%) had no ethnicity recorded. This represents a similar position to 2009.

44. During this period there have been a total 214 cases brought regarding unsatisfactory performance and attendance. 48(23%) were BME, 150(70%) were non BME and 16(7%) had no recorded ethnicity.

45. There were a total of 23 cases taken to police staff gross misconduct hearing. These resulted in 6 dismissals (3 non BME : 3 BME), 6 Formal Reprimands (3 non BME : 3 BME), 8 written warning (6 Non BME : 2 BME), 2 where the member of staff resigned prior to the hearing (both BME) and 1 case not proven (non BME).

46. In the last 12 months there have been 17 Fairness at Work (FAW) complaints submitted by CCC staff. 8 of these were brought by staff who describe themselves as white, 3 as BME and 6 where ethnicity was not declared.

47. None of theses FAWs have been brought in relation to diversity issues. Each has involved complaints against line managers behaviour and has been resolved to the acceptance of the aggrieved person with the learning from each brought to the attention of the OCU Commander at the two monthly Confidence, Satisfaction and Standards meeting.

Number of police officers working in CCC on restrictive/ recuperative duties and results of review into police officer to staff ratio within CCC

48. There are currently 18 police officers on restricted duty within CCC as compared to 1 member of police staff.

49. There are currently 77 members of police staff and 12 police officers on recuperative duties.

50. The ratio of police officers to staff was reviewed in early 2010 as described in paragraph 3.

Equality and diversity action plan developed in collaboration with the Diversity Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD)

51. CCC has developed an Equality and Diversity structure as described in paragraphs 11 to 15 in collaboration with DCFD. The action plans have been assessed against the baseline within the ESPS framework and during the next year each area will move toward the integration phase as defined in the ESPS.

Major challenges and successes in relation to Equality & Diversity

52. CCC has experienced a number of successes in relation to Equality and Diversity in the past year. The establishment of a clear Equality framework that is directly linked to ESPS and supports the MPS Strategy is a key part of this. The involvement of staff at all levels has started to embed this in normal business and many of the successes are highlighted above

53. In order to improve service delivery as efficiently as possible, CCC has undertaken a review of staff shift rosters and in May 2011 will be moving away from a 12 hours cycle to one based on 8 hour tours of duty. The benefits include a better match of staffing to demand, a reduction in overtime costs and also a reduction in the length of time on duty that reduces the stress placed on staff as assessed by the Health and Safety Fatigue Index.

54. This is a significant change to working practices and as such has been developed in full consultation with staff associations, unions and the Police Federation. The whole process has also been subject to a challenge process that included DCFD and two members of the CCF.

55. There were a total of nine separate shift patterns developed by the working group. Five related to the First Contact telephony environment and four for the despatch control room environment. Each of these was equality impact assessed to allow the working group and the CCC senior management to understand the issues in relation to the changes. All of the patterns had similar issues raised. Finishing in the early morning, additional working days brought about by shorter shift lengths and additional weekend working were all raised. These were seen to impact on female staff travelling home and also parents and elder workers with caring responsibilities. As part of the changes that were voted for by staff there is the opportunity for any staff member to apply for flexible working to seek to balance these issues with the business needs of CCC.

56. A number of challenges remain and described in the following paragraphs, but it is hoped that through the strong governance structure that is now in place there is a framework to drive, support and monitor a move towards excellence as assessed in the ESPS.

57. The key challenges for the next year will be:

• Delivering the proposed change to shift rosters.
• Implementing any change agreed as part of TP Development Programme.
• Completing baseline assessment against ESPS.
• Exploring the gap in satisfaction in 999 services between BME and non BME callers.
• Increasing the representation of BME staff in supervisory roles.
• Understanding the reason for staff not seeking to state their faith beliefs.
• Understanding the reasons for low representation of staff with disability.
• Understanding and addressing any issues regarding apparent disproportionality in misconduct processes.
• Maintaining diversity of staff at all levels when there is no external recruitment.
• Identifying and improving services to people with mental health issues.

Issues arising from the potential repositioning of Integrated Borough Operations (IBO) within CCC

58. Territorial Policing is developing a business case to bring the fast time intelligence processes into CCC and to combine the current Despatch supervisor and IBO supervisor roles together to create a single controller responsible for response policing based within CCC. The remaining roles performed by the IBO would continue to be delivered on borough. Although the full Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) has not been completed at this stage initial assessment is that this would not bring any identified issues around equality and diversity related to service delivery.

59. Although not yet approved by Management Board the first draft business case proposes that a number of staff currently working in IBOs would have to relocate into one of the three CCC centres. The exact detail of staff numbers are not yet finalised, but it is assessed that there will be a number of potential equality and diversity issues associated with this. DCFD have already been engaged as part of the development of the business case and approval of any business case will include a full EIA.

C. Other organisational & community implications

Equality and Diversity Impact

1. This report seeks to demonstrate the progress which has been made in relation to diversity and equality within CCC, with particular emphasis on projects which have been taken forward over the last eighteen months.

2. As it has been demonstrated in the content of this report, not only has CCC implemented a robust and inclusive overarching diversity and equality forum, but it has also started to generate discreet outcome focused projects addressing equality and diversity across all of the protected characteristics.

3. Furthermore, the overarching forum has a two-fold function of sanctioning the projects which will be taken forward as well as providing a challenge panel for issues which have been highlighted as a consequence of conducting equality impact assessment.

Consideration of Met Forward

4. The ongoing development of the CCF directly supports the Met Connect strand – Standardisation of engagement structures. As outlines in paragraphs 30 to 36 this engagement structure is being developed along the lines of a CPEG and under LCP2 guidance and is becoming increasingly involved with activity at CCC.

5. The work of the CCC Equality and Diversity panel is directly supporting the Met People strand of valuing our officers and staff through the current programmes concerning WBA for supervisors, development of support for LGBT and female officers as outlined above. This also addresses many of the recommendations made in the Race and Faith enquiry with the OCU Commander directly leading this work, the direct involvement of Leadership Academy and DCFD in its development and in particular the mentoring scheme for aspiring CCC managers

Financial implications

6. There are no additional financial implications arising from this report. The change in staff shift rosters to improve service delivery, which is covered in paragraphs 49 and 50, is part of the wider shift pattern review that is being undertaken as part of the TP Development Programme. Overall this change is anticipated to deliver savings of £2m per annum from 1 April 2011, which has been built into the Draft Policing London Business Plan and Budget for 2011-14.

Legal implications

7. There are no specific legal issues arising from this report which is for information only but the steps taken to monitor and promote equality and diversity support the MPAs legal obligations in these respects.

Environmental implications

8. There are no identified environmental implications.

Risk implications

9. There are no identified risk implications.

D. Background papers

None

E. Contact details

Report author: Chief Superintendent Ben-Julian Harrington, MPS Central Communications Command, MPS

For information contact:

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

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