The Metropolitan Police Service Five Ps

Report: 6
Date: 24 September 2009
By: Deputy Commissioner on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report sets out the Commissioner’s direction of travel for the Metropolitan Police Service, outlined in the five P strands of Presence, Performance, Productivity, Professionalism and Pride. The five Ps are touchstones for how the MPS will deliver on its priorities of increasing safety, improving confidence and continuous improvement.

A. Recommendation

That the report be received.

B. Supporting information

The MPS direction of travel

1. On his appointment, the Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson set out his view on how the MPS should be delivering for London, this is articulated in the five Ps: Presence, Performance, Productivity, Professionalism and Pride.

2. In setting out his view, the Commissioner reinforced his intention to reduce crime, to improve public confidence in the police and to provide policing services that the public expect while making the most effective use of available resources.

3. He emphasised that we will be intolerant of violence in all forms and of anti-social behaviour and to do this we must be present and visible. If we perform, act and look professional and tackle crime then the public will have confidence in us and we can feel proud. The MPS have made a pledge to the communities of London, to perform to a high standard, concentrating on the priorities that reflect what our communities want.

Establishing the five Ps

4. The five Ps succinctly capture the behaviours we expect all our officers and staff to exhibit to achieve our priorities of increasing safety, improving confidence and delivering continuous improvement.

5. Activity to exemplify the Commissioner’s five Ps and enable this cultural way of working is taking place across the organisation; of course, much is building on existing activity but some are newly identified initiatives that capture the spirit of the Commissioner’s approach. This activity is overseen by the 5Ps Oversight Board, which has been established and is chaired by the Deputy Commissioner. The board is attended by MPS Management Board members, along with representation from MPA officers.

6. Internal communication on this approach began shortly after the Commissioner took up his post. It was launched by the Commissioner at an event for more than 2000 members of staff in February. The Communications Plan aims to ensure staff are aware of their own role in helping the MPS to deliver on these promises. Internal communication has, therefore, focused on both explaining and supporting the delivery of the key activities. In November, the Service Conference, attended by MPS senior management and MPA members, will mark progress to date.

What are the five Ps delivering?

Presence

7. Presence has two elements, physically being seen to be there and through our bearing, authority and style the impact we have in the lives of Londoners, who call for our services, who see us in their daily lives or who experience us as we enforce the laws. This is at the heart of how we provide safety and confidence to London. To deliver this the Presence strand has focused on operational changes to how we work to increase the numbers of officers seen and to improve how we are experienced - working on the long term changes that will embed and underpin this emphasis.

8. In delivery terms this has meant a focus on Town Centres, Single Patrol, Delivery of the Pledge and Intrusive Supervision. The Town Centre work has identified 32 Town Centres which have been negotiated with local partners as the primary focus of our early work. We now monitor activity, crime and disorder at those locations and are developing a menu of the most effective interventions. So far these have delivered an additional 184,000 hours patrol and 2,149 arrests. It is too early to pull out general success but in the locations where we have effectively engaged and delivered we have seen reductions in violence and disorder and very positive feedback. We are now working on greater consistency and shared learning.

9. In order to underpin the work, the Commissioner held a briefing on the 18 June 2009 for all members of the TP and CO OCU SMTs and representatives of SMTs from all other business groups. Since then we have held workshops for front line leaders (Sergeants, Inspectors and Band D police staff) to work with them on how they are going to deliver the work locally with a focus on Single Patrol, Intrusive Supervision and Pledge delivery. Of the 6,500 staff due to attend, we have so far engaged nearly 4,000 and are on track to have delivered the workshop to all relevant staff before mid October. At these workshops staff are asked to provide details of barriers to doing their job well and to commit to actions back in the workplace to bring about change. We are now running a series of workshops with TP OCUs to provide them this feedback and the list of actions and to work with this together with data from the staff survey and local confidence/satisfaction measures to develop bespoke action plans to embed change.

10. The feedback from the workshops by operational staff has been very positive with over 80% levels of satisfaction with the day, high 70% assessments that it will help them do their job better and very positive engagement by staff. A full evaluation is being carried out by the Strategic Research & Analysis Unit (SRAU) and will be submitted to the 5Ps Oversight Board in November.

11. The increased focus on the Pledge has resulted in the introduction of a pilot on 3 BOCUs (Harrow, Brent and Barnet) to explore improvements in responses to I and S calls and developing an appointment system. Emerging practice has shown us delivering a significant improvement in I and S call performance (7% and 25% respectfully) and of the 288 appointments we made in the first 2 weeks we attended exactly on time for 177 and within 15 minutes to almost all of the rest. These early results are being analysed to identify what good practice we can spread quickly across the MPS and to see the feedback from the cards we are now regularly leaving with people who call us about the quality of our response.

12. Part of the long term plan to embed the Town Centre work is to significantly increase the number of MSC officers. We plan to achieve this by stepping up the pace of recruiting and retaining the people we attract. Learning from pilot work in Camden and exit interviews of staff shows many leave due to the lack of regular support and that recruitment processes do not support the ethos of volunteering. There are considerable opportunities to increase the productivity of staff by better equipping, tasking and briefing. To support this each Borough has introduced extra sergeants allocated to drive local recruitment, properly supervise and brief staff and ensure they are properly equipped.

Performance

13. The MPS has consistently reduced crime over the last decade. To build on this we will manage performance by concentrating on three key areas: 1) Safety; 2) Confidence; 3) Continuous Improvement.

14. Over the years the emphasis quite rightly has been on reducing crime and disorder, and catching offenders - this performance culture is now well embedded. Under this strand we are developing our confidence, public and victim satisfaction measures together with our pledge performance to enrich our performance framework. The third element of continuous improvement is to undertake work to develop monitoring regimes to ensure we are improving our productivity in all areas of our business.

15. The Performance strand is about getting better at what we do and rigorously challenge those that do not perform, whilst rationalising the approach to performance management to enable more informed decision-making. This will help us understand and improve performance against our strategic outcomes of safety, confidence and improvement. We will create transparency on resource allocation and how it is driving performance. We will endeavour to specifically link resource allocation with outcomes and focus analysis and performance conversations on high-priority areas including productivity.

16. The Pledge is at the heart of our policing performance, promising service standards that are underpinned by local priorities for each neighbourhood. The Pledge features as a key element of the 2009/10 MPS Policing Plan and ten of the Pledge indicators are included in the MPS critical performance areas (CPAs). This ensures that performance against external promises is subject to regular Management Board level oversight.

Productivity

17. Whilst maintaining performance, the MPS has exceeded its Government efficiency targets for cashable and non-cashable savings. The drive to innovate and change is relentless and is part of the MPS’s culture, whilst the need to find further cash savings through efficiencies is becoming ever more pressing. Productivity seeks to ensure we are more efficient by embedding value for money and improvement across the organisation.

18. The MPS continuously strives to identify further opportunities to achieve efficiency savings and has established a Service Improvement Plan (SIP), which acts as the formal process through which major improvement/efficiency activity is identified and implemented. The Service has also conducted an analysis of areas of high cost to help understand the drivers of those costs and identify opportunities to make savings in these areas. This committed approach to achieving savings in future years will be crucial to maintaining and enhancing service provision in a challenging economic climate.

19. During August, as part of the 2010-2013 budget and business planning process, we have reviewed and developed the improvement and efficiency activity within the SIP. This has increased clarity on the MPS position against the budget gap, progress and status of initiatives and identified cross-cutting organisational dependencies for Service Improvement Board to oversee going forward.

Professionalism

20. Professionalism reinforces that we must take personal responsibility for our actions and learn lessons in order to change when we need to change. We must challenge behaviour that does not live up to the highest standards through more intrusive supervision by managers and enforcing good governance. Professionalism activity is taking place across the organisation, aimed at both new and existing staff, to ensure the MPS can be a service people can trust in.

21. We are currently reviewing induction into the MPS for police officers and the extended police family to ensure the recruit experience is improved and probationary periods are managed effectively and formally recognised following completion. We are also assessing the value of pre-learning in the Initial Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP) process. This work supports the wider Transforming HR programme, which is scheduled to go live in December.

22. Equality and Diversity and Key Encounter principles are being integrated into key frontline training including Central Communication Command (CCC), IPLDP and PCSO as well as Leadership Academy products. This will develop awareness, skill and expertise of all employees engaged in public interactions including crime and ASB reporting, as well as stop and search. A programme has been established for developing the MPS response to the MPA Race and Faith Inquiry. Progress on this will be communicated separately to the Authority.

23. The MPS is committed to putting into place systems and processes which facilitate learning, prevent misconduct and discourage unprofessional behaviour. Since 2008, Directorate of Professional Standards, have been delivering presentations to officers entitled 'Professional Behaviour', these presentations centre around complaints for incivility, particularly within the 'stop and search' arena and 'use of force'. Additionally the presentations provide advice along with tactical options aimed to reduce incidents of incivility to ultimately increase public confidence in the service we provide.

Pride

24. Pride underpins the rest of the Ps and focuses on the standards we set for dress, language and service. We are proud of delivering policing and we will strive to be the best and maintain that reputation. We value our successes by applauding our heroes and challenging those that talk us down. Every contact we have with a member of the public leaves a trace, we must think about every encounter and be proud to get it right the first time.

Challenges

25. The MPS have identified a number of challenges in making the five Ps our way of working that must be managed appropriately through the 5Ps Oversight Board:

Impact on Confidence

26. Confidence in police tackling crime and ASB is now the single performance measurement for all police forces in England and Wales. Key drivers of confidence are effectiveness in dealing with crime, engagement with the community, fair treatment and alleviating local ASB. The Board has recently commissioned wider research on identifying the initiatives and activity that are making an impact on confidence.

Stakeholder Engagement

27. Stakeholder engagement and communication of the Ps and supporting activity is critical to our success in embedding the Ps as a way of working. The MPS will ensure that officers and staff are aware of the five Ps and understand their role in delivering the Commissioner’s vision. The internal communication strategy and plan are cascading five Ps messages and supporting the delivery of five Ps related activity.

Sustainability

28. The five Ps must become a conscious way of working and part of the MPS fabric that extends beyond the initial period of focused activity. New activity is being mainstreamed into business planning to reinforce this long term commitment and enable this sustainability.

Summary

29. This report has outlined the Commissioner’s direction of travel articulated in five Ps and key supporting activity. This re-affirms that the five Ps is not just a programme - but a cultural way of working to re-establish our focus on traditional policing and officer and staff behaviour in the delivery of day-to-day activities.

C. Race and equality impact

1. The five Ps will impact on our way of working and the way in which we deliver the policing service. To ensure we consider the full race and diversity implications of the five Ps, Equality Impact Assessments (EIA) have been prepared for existing activities such as the Policing Pledge, which highlighted the importance of providing a high-quality service consistently to all service users.

2. EIAs have been or are in the process of being established for new initiatives. For instance the EIA prepared for the Professionalism strand identified that:

• Introducing IPLDP pre-learning could affect the ability of the organisation to attract the diverse range of candidates we require to deliver recruitment targets. The work will identify how to mitigate this risk.
• Integrating Key Encounters into training should improve the quality of encounters between staff and people of all backgrounds and therefore reducing dissatisfaction with the attitude of some staff.

D. Financial implications

The approach to delivering and embedding the five Ps will be completed within existing resources and is not intended to be a catalyst for major new spending. Indeed a major focus of both the performance and productivity work strands is ensuring the effective use and targeting of scarce resources to support the delivery of the Service’s objectives. Costs have been incurred in developing and producing the internal publicity materials and a budget of £400k has been found for the Policing London Seminars and subsequent events through re-aligning existing resources.

Any growth to support P activity will be subject to the normal MPA/MPS decision-making and budget processes.

E. Legal implications

The five Ps aims to secure continuous improvement in the way the police force exercises its function, by facilitating delivery of strategic objectives set out in the Policing London Business Plan.

F. Background papers

None

G. Contact details

Report author(s): Richard Clarke, Strategy and Improvement, Resources Directorate

For more information contact:

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

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