2001/02 performance report

Report: 09
Date: 27 June 2002
By: Clerk

Summary

The Metropolitan Authority has a responsibility to set and monitor the annual Policing Plan targets for the Metropolitan Police Service. The report gives a summary of MPS performance against the targets set by the Authority for the 2001-2 planning year.

A. Recommendations

1. Members are asked to note the report

B. Supporting information

1. The Authority sets the MPS annual policing plan targets. The Professional Standards and Performance Monitoring Committee (PSPM) regularly monitors these targets. PSPM received a full detailed report on the 2001/2 end of year performance at its meeting on 17 June 2002. This report provides summary results against the targets set. In future, monitoring will be carried out by the new Planning, Performance and Review Committee.

Overall performance

2. Overall, 47 targets were set in the policing plan and the MPS provided performance results for 44 of these targets. Of these, 16 were achieved and 28 not achieved.

Street crime

3. The end of year position was a 38% rise in street crime on the previous year against a 2% reduction target. The authority has received a number of reports on street crime in recent months, which, following Safer Streets operations, show that this increase has now been stabilised and there are signs of a reducing trend. The judicial disposal rate for 2001/2 was 8% against a 10% target.

Firearms and knives

4. A 34% increase was recorded in gun related violent crime in 2001/2 compared with the previous year. Carrying and usage of handguns in particular rose. Firearm related robberies and homicides rose by 74% and 59% respectively during the year. Safer Streets has reduced this trend in recent months.

5. The target to increase judicial disposals for possession of offensive weapons or bladed instruments was achieved with a 19% increase being recorded against a 10% target.

Anti-social behaviour

6. No specific corporate target was set for this area, but boroughs all set objectives and targets relating to anti-social behaviour.

Diverting young people from crime

7. The 2001/2 Policing Plan set a target to work with partners to reduce the proportion of youths who offend for the second time. A measure for this was developed during the year but a target was not.

8. Targets were also set for timeliness of processing youths through the court system. The targets for dealing with persistent young offenders (PYOs) from arrest to charge within 2 days was not met but performance improved from 55% to 76%. The target for dealing with PYOs from charge to court listing within 7 days was met, at 71%. The target of dealing within 80% of young offenders from arrest to case disposal within 28 days was also met. The target for getting young offenders results onto PNC, 80% within 10 days, was not met with only 65% being achieved.

Stop and search

9. The MPS aimed to increase the arrest rate from PACE stop and searches for both white and ethnic minority persons and to achieve parity in arrest rates between the two groups. In 2000/1, arrest rates were 15.9% for searches of white persons and 17.3% for ethnic minority persons. For 2001/2 arrest rates were 14.9% and 15.7% for white and ethnic minority persons respectively. Hence, although the gap in arrest rates between the two groups has reduced slightly, overall arrest rates have fallen so the target has not been achieved. Numbers of stops and searches also increased during the year, particularly relating to priority areas of street crimes and drugs.

10. Complaints from stop and searches were to be monitored according to the Policing Plan. There were 93 complaints in 2001/2 from white persons stopped/searched and 221 from ethnic minority persons. This was a reduction on complaints recorded from stop and searches in 2000/1, of 272 from ethnic minority persons and 186 from white persons.

Burglary

11. A 3% increase was recorded in 2001/2 for burglaries against a 2% reduction target. The 12% judicial disposal target was also not met. Since April 2002, there are indications of a further rise in burglaries.

Drug related crime

12. The MPS aimed to increase judicial disposals for supply and intent to supply Class A drugs by 10% in 2001/2. They more than achieved this objective with a 21.3% increase being recorded. There was also a target to refer 3000 arrestees into drug treatment programmes, which was again achieved with 3568 offenders being referred.

Race crime

13. There were three targets set relating to race crime. The first was to reduce differences in satisfaction expressed by victims of racist crime and that expressed by victims of other crime. This difference was increased slightly to 7.7%. The plan stated that there would be a target developed for numbers of racist incidents and crimes. A target was not developed but recorded racist incidents and crimes fell by 10% in 2001/2. The final target was to achieve a 17% judicial disposal rate, which was achieved.

Homophobic crime

14. Similar targets were set for homophobic crime: to have no difference in victim satisfaction with other victims; to monitor levels of homophobic incidents and crimes; and to achieve a 13% judicial disposal rate. Regarding victim satisfaction, the MPS developed a methodology for surveying victims of homophobic crime but this was not agreed by the IAG and no alternative was proposed. Recorded levels of homophobic crimes and incidents were 6% less than in the previous year. The judicial disposal rate was 15.3%, achieving the target.

Domestic violence

15. Again three targets were set for domestic violence. Firstly, there was an aim to increase recorded domestic violence. Domestic violence incidents stayed almost the same as in 2000/1, with 90,974 being recorded, 0.2% less than the previous year, hence this objective was not achieved. Secondly, 15% of domestic violence cases had a judicial disposal in 2001/2, achieving the 14% target. Finally, the percentage of repeat domestic violence incidents was monitored, with 14.9% being repeat incidents in 2001/2, a small drop from 15.9% in 2000/1.

Rape

16. The target for rape offences was a judicial disposal rate of 25%. The performance for the year was 22.5% hence this objective was not achieved. This is, however, an improvement on last year's rate of 18.6%.

Child abuse

17. The first target around child abuse was a judicial disposal rate for child sex abuse cases of 35%. Performance was 26%, a drop from last year's rate of 29.8%, hence this target was not achieved. In addition, 60% of boroughs were to run child abuse prevention initiatives in partnership with other agencies. During 2001/2 all boroughs ran initiatives, hence achieving this target.

Emergency response

18. In addition to the priority areas described above, sustained activity objectives were set for emergency response, homicide, terrorism, road casualties and vehicle crime. Three objectives were set for emergency response and none were achieved. Satisfaction with police action in response to 999 calls was 80.9%, a slight increase on the previous year but failing to achieve the 90% target. The percentage of 999 calls answered within 15 seconds fell from 83.6% in 2000/1 to 73.6% in 2001/2, failing to meet the 80% target. This was mainly due to a low percentage of calls answered within 15 seconds in the first six months of the year whereas performance was considerable better in the second half of the year with 83% of calls being answered within 15 seconds. The percentage of urgent incidents attended within 12 minutes also fell from 76.4% to 72.5%, again failing to meet the 80% target.

Homicide

19. Only 72.6% of homicides were cleared-up in 2001/2, falling from 89.9% in the previous year and failing to meet the 90% target. A paper has been provided to PSPM on this, the reasons for the fall being an increase in homicides, an increase in stranger attacks rather than domestic cases and a shortage of investigators.

Road casualties

20. The aim was to reduce road casualties from 0.76 per 1000 population (equating to 5570 per year) to 0.74. The figure for 2001/2 was 0.75 per 1000 population hence this target was not achieved; however this does represent a gradual long-term decline in casualties.

Terrorism

21. 98.5% of scenes involving suspect improvised explosive devises were assessed as effectively managed. This was slightly lower than the 100% target and represents 8 scenes judged to be poorly managed.

Vehicle crime

22. The targets for vehicle crime were to achieve a 5% reduction and a 5% judicial disposal rate. Neither of these were achieved with a 3% increase being recorded and a 4.3% judicial disposal rate.

Sickness

23. In addition to operational objectives, the 2001/2 Policing Plan set a number of internal developmental objectives. Targets to reduce police and civilian staff sickness were not met, with levels remaining fairly static from 2001/2. Traffic warden sickness was reduced and the target met.

Recruitment

24. The target to recruit 2475 police officers during the year was met, with actual recruitment being at 2748 officers. However, only 1470 civilian staff were recruited against a 2640 target, partly due to restrictions on civil staff recruitment in order to manage the 2001/2 budget.

Retention

25. 7.6% of police officers left voluntarily in the first 5 years of service during 2001/2, failing to meet the 6.5% target. The target for voluntary leavers for 5 to 30 years service was met, at 2.3% compared to a 2.8% target. The civil staff turnover target was also met, with 10.6% leaving compared to a 13% target.

Workforce diversity

26. The percentage of visible ethnic minority (VEM) officers increased gradually over the year from 4.17% to 4.86% (from 1055.25 to 1300 officers), due to a large increase in ethnic minority recruits, not quite meeting the 5% target.

27. There is a difference in average lengths of service for VEM and white officers and a target was set to reduce this by 10%. This was not achieved and the gap widened, attributed to the number of new VEM recruits. Similarly there is a difference in length of service for female and male officers and a target to reduce this by 6.6% was set and this was achieved.

28. Targets were set to increase VEM representation throughout higher police ranks and civilian grades. Neither of these targets were met, with VEM representation at sergeant and above and at grade 10 and above actually falling during the year.

CRR training

29. The target for 75% of police and front-line civilian staff to have received Community and Race Relations (CRR) training was achieved with 76% being trained by the end of March 2002.

Professional standards

30. No targets were set in this area, but levels of corruption offences and complaints were monitored. Overall, complaints per 1000 officers reduced and the percentage substantiated increased.

Future MPA monitoring of MPS performance

31. The above is necessarily a summary of the headline performance indicators. PSPM Committee has received a much fuller report and discussed many of the issues involved in greater detail. MPS representatives at PSPM pointed out a number of factors affecting performance, including:

• too many priorities being set – to be successful the MPS needs to be able to concentrate of key strategic issues
• the recent focus on street crime has led to other areas becoming less of a priority
• stretched resources – despite recruitment, resources are still stretched due to Operation Safer Streets and September 11th and no spare capacity currently exists . Many officers are new in post.

32. The key views from PSPM committee members were that:

• although some areas have improved, overall the results represent poor performance for the MPS
• the MPA needs to be in a position to understand what the performance of the MPS is, what factors impact on it and how the extra resources secured by the MPA are adding value
• agreement that fewer objectives and targets are needed but that robust performance management is also needed over those set
• that the MPS needs to inform the MPA what it is the Authority can do to aid MPS improvement
• that the MPS needs to continue looking at ways of improving working practices as importantly as identifying what extra resources are needed to improve performance
• the MPS and MPA need to become more sophisticated over performance management, including clear business cases for extra resources where required and looking at more qualitative issues

33. Under the new MPA committee structure, performance monitoring will be carried out regularly of all Policing Plan indicators for 2002/3. Emerging performance issues will be identified and provided to the appropriate committee. PSPM Committee have identified the issues of poor performance in emergency response and recent increases in burglary as needing to be reported to committee in July.

C. Financial implications

None arising from this paper.

D. Background papers

Professional Standards and Performance Monitoring, 13 June 2002, 2001-2 Performance Report.

E. Contact details

Report author: Johanna Gillians, Senior Analyst, MPA.

For information contact:

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

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