Policing: reform, accountability and engagement meeting of police authority chairs and chief police officers

Report: 12
Date: 25 September 2003
By: Chair

Summary

On 9 September 2003, the Home Office organised a meeting of Police Authority Chairs and Chief Officers of Police, chaired by Hazel Blears MP (Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety) and attended by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.

The meeting was designed to provide a forum for discussing the possible next stages in police reform. This report summarises the key elements in the discussion and proposes that the MPA should consider how new governance structures might apply within London.

A. Recommendations

Members are asked to:

1. note the report; and
2. agree that a further report be presented for discussion at a future meeting of the Co-Ordination and Policing Committee so that views can be submitted to the Home Office on how the issues raised by the continued reform programmed (including any new governance structures at local level) might apply within London.

B. Supporting information

1. In each of the last few years, the Home Office has convened an annual gathering of Police Authority Chairs and Chief Officers of Police to discuss the progress of the policing reform agenda. The latest of these meetings was held on Tuesday 9 September 2003 at the Institute of Directors. It was chaired by Hazel Blears MP (Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety) and the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were present for part of the meeting.

2. The Ministerial speeches were keen to emphasise a number of points. These included the following:

• There have been record levels of investment in the police service in recent years. (Next year, however, police grant will only rise broadly in line with inflation).
• Continuing reform is essential to deliver the best possible service to the public.
• The priority of reform is to build safer communities.
• Another key element of reform must be to achieve clearer lines of accountability and deeper and stronger engagement with local communities. The aim must be strong, empowered, active communities with a greater say in how their communities are policed.
• At the same time, reform must ensure that the police service has a greater capacity for tackling level 2 criminality, serious and organised crime, and terrorism and be ready to combat threats of criminality making use of new technology. ((As part of this, the Government is consulting about the benefits or otherwise of a national agency to tackle organised crime).
• There is not at this stage a blueprint for further reform.
• There needs to be a recognition that anti-social behaviour blights local communities and must have a priority commensurate with this.
• The empowerment of (and devolution of resources and responsibility to) BCU Commanders (and possibly on to sector level) is to be encouraged.

3. The meeting was enlivened by a presentation from Alison West, the Chief Executive of the National Extension College, on “Engaging Local People”. A copy of her paper is attached. The issues it raises are very relevant to the work that the MPA has been doing on encouraging better forms of consultation around policing issues in London.

4. The Prime Minister in his contribution emphasised the importance of cross-agency working and the need to use police officers more effectively (by identifying tasks that could be done more appropriately by civil support staff and by PCSOs). He also commented on the need for new powers to tackle serious and organised crime and for powers to tackle low-level crime without complicated legal processes.

5. The meeting divided into “breakout groups” which was probably a new experience for many of the Chief Officers of Police present. The topics considered within the groups were “in the short, medium and long-term:

• How can accountability arrangements for policing be clarified for communities and strengthened?
• How can the police and local partners better involve and engage communities in local decisions about reducing crime, the fear of crime, and anti-social behaviour? And
• How can the desire to see local policing better reflect local needs be squared with the need to tackle, effectively, cross-border, national and international crime?

6. Some of the points which emerged from these “breakout groups” included the following:

• There is a need to recognise that policing is a key agent of social cohesion and that reassurance feeds regeneration and social well-being.
• The public want more visible local policing.
• The role of community beat policing needs to be redefined. Should it be simply about delivering reassurance? Is it appropriate that it is also about building social capacity and community development?
• There must be a recognition that local priorities may be different from force-wide strategic priorities and those priorities set nationally. The centre must be prepared to let go.
• Local priorities must be shared by other agencies who must also help contribute to solutions.
• If there are moves towards local models of governance (for example, like the local police boards in Northern Ireland or being trialled in Thames Valley), these must recognise that there must be flexibility on structures. Such local bodies must not be over-bureaucratic and there will not be a one-size-fits-all solution. There must be that ability for them to set local priorities and have access to resources to do so.
• There is a need to define responsibilities and resources needed at national, strategic/force-wide, and at local/BCU levels.
• However, there is also a need to go below BCU level: communities do not operate in Boroughs or even wards, but in units of perhaps 200 households. At this level, there is not a need for new structures, but for a new culture of engagement involving all agencies.
• All agencies must be prepared to engage appropriately at all levels.
• There will be a requirement for new skills both within the police service but also in other agencies to ensure that public and community engagement really works. In particular, the police culture needs to value community policing much more than it does at present.
• Police authorities might have a specific role in creating a climate in which this can happen. In particular, they might have specific duties to promote social cohesion and to build social capacity and community engagement in policing.
• Other agencies need to have a clear responsibility to play their part in tackling crime and promoting community safety.

C. Equality and diversity implications

It is essential that in any programme to engage local communities positive steps are taken to ensure that all sections of the community are involved and are encouraged and enabled to take part.

D. Financial implications

None arising from this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Simon Vile, MPA.

For more information contact:

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

Appendix 1

“Engaging Local People” - presentation from Alison West, Chief Executive of the National Extension College.

9 September 2003

"Deeper and stronger engagement and clearer lines of accountability"

If the policing agenda includes engaging the community more meaningfully how is this to be done? How should the police service go about involving local people? Engagement in crime reduction and in the nature of policing is a healthy feature of any community. Of course as any senior police officer knows, there is a dark side to engagement. It can be confined to self-appointed community 'representatives'. It can mean delays in the decision making process. It can give undue influence to vociferous interest groups. It is hard to avoid attracting police wannabes.

Despite these dangers, it is self evident that local people cannot be allowed to drift into apathy or hostility in relation to policing. In addition to policing by consent we also aspire to police through co-operation. Local people, by which I mean ordinary local residents, can be drawn in and it need not be costly. In the long run, proper engagement will lead to better and more efficient decision making. The problem is how to get there. At present there are a range of ways in which the service seeks to relate to local people: there are the official links With local democratic systems, there are consultation exercises, there are consultative panels, focus groups, links with neighbour watch, crime prevention work, community policing, links with schools, semi-community development and youth work etc.

How many people are reached by existing systems? 10% if you are lucky. There are plenty of activities going on at present that are not likely to engage ordinary local people in any meaningful way. Engagement is NOT about:

• Replacing the current system with different forms of representation. The engagement issue is not a revolutionary one.
• Service planning going out into the community (including physically). Bureaucratic and committee systems are not suitable for combining with consultation or involvement. Only very unusual people want to read strategic plans.
• Working at an engagement level that is too wide. Splitting a large city into six and setting up panels and committees will not engage local people and is a costly business
• Building parallel bureaucracies including area forums and committees that mimic internal structures and require the same ability to read policy-speak documents
• Asking ordinary local people to become quasi-professionals even if we offer to build up their capacity to cope with this. Most people do not want this role, which is neither one thing nor another
• Asking police officers to act as community workers
• Having constant consultation. People lose interest after a while and certainly when they are being asked abstract questions about strategy.
• Organising, or rather attempting to organise, the community and voluntary sector into a form of neatness that would permit ‘representation’ from it. The community and voluntary sector can never be organised to give any reps legitimacy.
• Transfer of services delivery to local people. There is certainly a role for carefully selected services to be delivered by the community but most people do not want to run their own services

Most of the above should be avoided because they take up endless time. It is entirely proper to have systems for reaching agreement with democratic representatives (local and national) and for the activists of Neighbourhood Watch. But these are not suitable for 90% of the population. Directly running youth or community activities is also a debatable use of police time. Essentially it is about how a professional service interfaces with amateurs. The defining characteristic of an ordinary local person is that they are an amateur, with no real knowledge of how to prevent crime let alone how to deal with it. So one question is, what areas of policing are actually helped by the involvement of amateurs? There are many areas of police work where they have little to contribute and where it may even be dangerous to seek to involve them. This might include career criminality, drug selling, terrorism, white-collar crime, financial fraud. These areas should have extra-police involvement but from experts and from the democratic process. If the issue is the balance of work, the priorities to be set, that is a democratic issue and the local/national state should be involved. If the issue needs specialist knowledge, then those with such knowledge should be brought in - city fraud could well benefit from getting ideas from city workers. In other words there has to be an obvious benefit to policing from any conversation. Why? Because otherwise it is wasting both police and community time.

Fortunately, such amateurs have a strong tendency to form themselves into the sports groups, hobby groups and clubs that are such a feature of UK society. The task therefore is to devise a system for an intelligent set of bridges to be built to allow an articulate dialogue between these two very different systems (which should be kept clearly separate). We need a better relationship between two separate systems and we should not fudge, blur or merge them.

If the list above was of what not to do, where is the list of what to do?

1. We should analyse and map both systems. They are both complex but they can be scientifically described. What do police services do already about relating to people? What sections carry out consultation? In what form? Are there officers working in the community? How do they link with crime prevention work? Where are the police stations? Equally we can map the community. How many people are in community groups? Where do they meet? What do they spend their time doing? What structures support this activity?
2. The next thing to do is to divide up services into high, medium and low levels of interest. Some topics are inherently more likely to interest ordinary local people. Involvement should start with high interest subjects - why start with the almost impossible ones? While different areas have different problems, most areas have an interest in anti-social behaviour, burglary, petty theft, shoplifting, visible drug selling and use, street violence and robbery. In addition to varying responses according to service, the same person will vary in their level of interest over time. Those with young children may be concerned about their vulnerability to abuse. When their children reach their teens, street violence becomes the main worry. A strategy therefore can never assume that someone who expressed interest in a topic will maintain that interest. People have to be re-engaged constantly and the system is never static.
3. Divide the area into street level units: about 200 houses is the size of area that is the most that people usually identify with. Ward level is too high. The neighbourhood level is where people feel they have knowledge to contribute and of course it is precisely the fact that they are there day after day, aware of normal patterns of life, that makes them of value to the police. People can be brought in through their strong identification with place, but that for most people means their VERY immediate locality. This can be done - Scotland has community councils that operate with street reps.
4. Divide people into types. There are crudely, three types of local resident:
   1. the activists. Probably about 10% of the population
   2. the ordinary local people who might be interested if directly asked. About 60-70%
   3. the refuseniks. People who simply do not want to get involved however hard you try. About 20-30%
      You should target the middle group, on the grounds that the activists are easy to get on board and the refuseniks never will, whatever effort you put in. This choice gives you the ability to concentrate on one group.
5. Now you have to work out a complex system, over a long period, of ways of contacting and involving this middle group. Do this through a mixture of approaching through topics or subjects and through a neighbourhood approach. You don't need a middle layer or a hierarchical structure up from street level to ward to larger area - that just clogs up time.

In all of the above, note that there are no hard to reach groups at all. The community is already out there organised into a whole variety of groups and activities. They may not come to public meetings unless there is a crisis on, but they are out there and waiting to be contacted. And they can be contacted. Many council officers, and those from other public agencies, are already in touch with them. Existing staff and existing community groups should form the core of your contact system, which should not be new, or additional to current services and systems.

If contact is in practice fairly easy, what is the conversation to be about? Most ordinary people have no idea at all how they could contribute to the police agenda. How should they relate to gangs of youths? How can ordinary residents tackle anti-social behaviour? How can people be- encouraged to use the streets, especially after dark? How can they help raise general levels of honesty? Under what circumstances should they back off and call the police? How can they help break down barriers and suspicion between different groups in the community? How can particularly vulnerable residents be helped? A highly active 'normal' level of community activity may be the best contribution that local residents can make.

Police and Home Office research should be translated into usable form. We know that gating off communities is not the answer. We know that small issues of control prevent higher levels of criminality and nuisance developing. Who can carry out this translation if not the community workers that are present in most areas of concern? Very few high crime areas lack community professionals of some sort but their professional training does not include advice on how to engage local people in the policing agenda.

In addition to getting relevant information to local people in a form that makes sense to them. A good strategy will have to deal at some stage with the difficult issue of how to share power. Local people rapidly lose interest in endlessly commenting on issues if there is no obvious outcome that seems to be traceable back to their input. Their willingness to be involved is related to three key factors:

• is the decision to be theirs, or are they just to recommend tip?
• is the issue immediate, with the impact immediately obvious?
• do they feel they have knowledge or skills that will make the decision better?

Otherwise, many people are happy to leave the decision making to the professionals. Most people appear to take a highly functional view of involvement and will be hard to engage if they do not see a reason for their involvement.

However, when they are convinced that they can contribute, there is a vast reservoir of good-will towards the police, and a willingness to help, that has only just begun to be tapped. People are highly rational especially about the use of their own time and will only get involved if it makes sense. People are willing to be involved if they can contribute – this is a form of humble, admirable, rational idealism. And police officers and local people share this idealism- there can be no better basis for co-operation.

Alison West
Chief Executive

Alison West is the Chief Executive of the National Extension College, a charity which helps people of all ages return to learning. NEC runs educational courses for prisoners, often with the Prisoners Education Trust, and also management training courses for prison officers through the Prison Service. It has also worked with the Police Foundation on police driver training and on a handbook for police/community consultation.

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