Annual report to Consultation Committee

Report: 11
Date: 13 May 2004
By: Clerk

Summary

This report summarises the key issues addressed by the Consultation Committee over the last year, its accomplishments and some of the challenges it will need to address in the future.

A. Recommendation

That committee adopt this report.

B. Supporting information

1. The Consultation Committee has a number of responsibilities. These include

• advising the Authority of ways of raising the profile of the MPA and making the community and partner organisations aware of it role and work;
• considering all matters relating to MPA and MPS consultation strategies and to ensuring that such processes engage with and reflect the views of London’s diverse communities;
• reviewing the results of consultation undertaken to inform the policing plan; and
• considering all matters relating to Community and Police Consultative Groups and Independent Custody Visiting Panels, including approval of their annual funding.

2. The Committee has met five times during the year. There are ten members of the Committee. Cindy Butts has been Chair for the year and Abdul Ullah Deputy Chair. Other members have been Kirsten Hearn, Peter Herbert, Nicholas Long, Noel Lynch and Eric Ollerenshaw. Co-opted members have been Sandra Flower, Kate Monkhouse and Jane Simpson. Some of the major issues considered and reviewed by the Committee over the last year are described below.

Police Reform – Building Safer Communities Together

3. Strengthening communities’ engagement and giving them greater influence over policing is at the heart of the Green Paper ‘Policing: Building Safer Communities Together’ published by the Home Office in late 2003. The Consultation Committee was particularly reassured that at the national level there is recognition that effective community engagement is central to good practice and good governance of policing.

4. Before submitting its response to the Green Paper, the MPA mailed a survey questionnaire to over 1000 community groups across London, and, in replacing one of its regular meetings, the Chair of the Consultation Committee took the lead in holding a special Members’ workshop, as well as holding two separate Committee discussions on the importance and the implications of the Green Paper to the MPA.

5. While the national vision for police reform reflect the existing commitments and direction of the MPA, with respect to community engagement two particular aspects were highlighted by the Committee:

• First, the police service must interact with the community in much greater and in wholly new ways, with changes in organisational culture, training and skills, and with police officers rooted in local community bases, not necessarily in traditional police estate;
• Secondly, real and sustained community development and capacity building, especially in Black and minority ethnic and other disadvantaged communities, must be undertaken by the local partners. Policing in cooperation can only become real if the community policed has both the confidence and the capacity to cooperate.

Annual Police Priority Setting

6. An important component of informing its decision making process is the MPA’s statutory duty to ‘obtain the views of the public about policing.’ This is particularly critical in the annual police priority and planning process.

7. In complementing the community intelligence gathered by the MPS, particular attention over the last year was paid to obtaining the viewpoints of Londoners from as many different sources as possible. This included drawing on the results of consultation undertaken by other agencies and institutions such as the GLA, ALG, local authorities as well as Community Police Consultative Groups. It also included drawing on the findings of other relevant recent studies and reports. It also included consultation with representatives of the faith communities in partnership with the Haringey Peace Alliance, and in partnership with the London Civic Forum consultation with representatives from Asian Communities, refugee and asylum seekers, disabled communities, women’s networks, small businesses, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. A further youth workshop was organised by the Peabody Trust.

8. An overarching theme emerging from these consultations that the Consultation Committee considered particularly important is the demand for greater local community-police interaction and accountability. Rather than participate in a process of merely identifying discrete areas of criminal activity and putting then in some kind of priority, there was a much more strongly articulated desire for ongoing, direct, active involvement with the police. There should be less prescriptive and fewer corporate ‘high level’ priorities and much greater emphasis on a more accountable, ‘diversified’ and ‘localised’ planning process.

Community Police Consultative Groups

9. Over the last year, the Consultation Committee received a number of reports, and discussed on a number of occasions, how the partnership framework between the MPA and Community Police Consultative Groups (CPCGs) can be improved and strengthened.

10. The first area of confusion and difficulty regarded the governance role of the Authority over CPCGs. Further legal advice was received this last year that clearly established that CPCGs were independent, autonomous groups, and as such were not ‘agents’ of the MPA. The Consultation Committee was pleased to accept this advice and considers it as providing a firmer foundation by which the MPA should be working with its community partners.

11. Difficulties persist with the MPA’s administration and financial arrangements. These have resulted in inefficiencies in the working relationship with some CPCGs. Steps have been taken to achieve improvements in this area in the coming year. In addition, it is expected that the new funding arrangements for 2004/05 of advance payments rather than payments based on invoiced expenditures will both improve and simplify the administrative systems.

12. A third area of concern to the Committee has been to look into ways in which it can work with CPCGs to enhance their accountability for the funding they receive annually. In response to this concern, following an extensive process of consultation with the staff and members of the CPCGs themselves, including two workshops in November 2003; with Borough Commanders; with officers of the GLA, as well as with staff and Members of the MPA, the Consultation Committee adopted new Guidelines, Criteria and Application Form for 2004/05 funding of CPCGs. For the first time, this process has resulted in the MPA gaining a much fuller picture of the organisation of each of the CPCGs, their accomplishments and their planned activities over the coming year. It is also a much more open, transparent and accountable process.

13. The process also highlighted for the Committee the considerable variation in the nature of the organisations, the levels of participation and the activities undertaken by CPCGs across London. The Committee was concerned with the large discrepancies in funding levels between the CPCGs, with the variable costs in administrative support, with the number of groups with the lack of measurable achievements, and, with notable exceptions, with a lack of interest in race and diversity issues (particularly in those boroughs where the demographic makeup suggests it should be a key concern).

14. In following through on its commitment to ensuring there are effective ways by which Londoners can understand and influence the policing decisions and policies that effect them at the local level and within every borough, the Consultation Committee raises the concern that the MPA still does not have adequate staff to work with strengthening existing community mechanisms for local involvement in policing matters at anywhere near the level required.

Independent Custody Visiting Panels

15. Each year the Consultation Committee allocates a budget to Independent Custody Visiting Panels (ICVPs) to enable community volunteers to visit those in custody in local police stations. The purpose of the ICVPs is to strengthen public confidence in procedures at police stations.

16. The total amount allocated by the Consultation Committee for ICVPs for 2004/05 is £288,000. In recognising the MPA’s new statutory responsibilities for organising and overseeing the delivery of Independent Custody Visiting as delineated in Section 51 of the Police Reform Act 2002, the Committee also found it timely to undertake a review of the current support provided to ICVPs that will include the level of training required, the collection and monitoring of statistics, the relationship of the work of the Panels to the MPA’s responsibility for overall policing priorities, as well as an examination of the relationship between the number of custody suites and the number of Independent Custody Visitors. This review, which will be submitted to the Consultation Committee before December 2004, will enable the MPA’s support to ICVs to be based on a much more effective and sounder footing.

Governance and Infrastructure Resourcing

17. In July 2002 the Consultation Diversity and Outreach Committee was split into the Consultation Committee and the Equal Opportunities and Diversity Board. This restructuring of the Committee process has enabled the Authority to provide greater focus to its community engagement responsibilities. In following through on this commitment, over the last year the Consultation Committee has also encouraged, and is pleased to have supported the establishment of a dedicated community engagement infrastructure within the secretariat of the MPA to support this work. The appointment of the Head of Community Engagement and permanent policy development officers will strengthen the MPA’s commitment to developing and sustaining a coherent community engagement structure.

Other Community Engagement Initiatives

18. The Committee has also dealt with a number of other significant community engagement matters in addition to the above including:

• reviewing community engagement activity that MPS units are currently undertaking
• results of Public Attitude Survey and reassurance policing
• Step Change Programme consultation process
• MPS hosted major conferences
• results of the Capital Crime Conference
• strengthened youth consultation
• consultation with the Islamic community
• establishment of the MPA Citizens Panel
• the consultation role of MPS Independent Advisory Groups
• consultation on e-policing
• evaluation of the work of Community Consultation Co-ordinators

Challenges for the coming year

19. The Consultation Committee faces a number of challenges in the coming year. First, the ‘division of labour’ between the MPA and the MPS regarding who owns the process of community engagement will require greater clarification. The discussions arising from the Home Office Green Paper lean in the direction of the MPA leading on the gathering of Londoners’ views on overall strategic priorities while the MPS leads on local, more tactical and operational issues with the public it serves. As part of this division of responsibilities the role of the MPA would be to set standards and scrutinise against these standards – leaving the MPS to carry out local consultation activity. This has implications for the appropriate placement of CPCGs and the potential role of the London CPCG Chairs Forum in reporting back to the MPA on key issues emerging.

20. The MPS response to the Green Paper suggests that the strategic strengths of police authority oversight should be retained at the force level while local consultation and accountability should be undertaken through BCUs. Equally, the Authority might need to take full ownership and implementation of strategic, pan-London consultative processes on cross-cutting, force-wide issues.

21. With different community engagement and accountability mechanisms needing to be applied to different policing objectives at different organisational levels, an appropriate role for the Consultation Committee will be to support, collect and widely disseminate ‘best practice.’ This will also strengthen the Committee’s role in performing an effective governance and scrutiny role.

22. Finally, the Committee will need to consider the recommendations of the review of ICVPs and the appropriate way in which the MPA can more effectively manage and administer its statutory responsibilities for Independent Custody Visiting.

C. Race and equality impact

The Committee has ensured that all reports it has received during the year contain equality and diversity implications. Some of these are significant and separate equality impact assessments have been undertaken.

D. Financial implications

1. An SCD display stand was purchased for attendance at community outreach events. Two portable brochure stands to hold the SCD fact sheets were also purchased at a total cost of £2,544.

2. A total cost of £4,500 has been spent on developing and producing the SCD fact sheet series, including brailed copies.

3. The costs have been provided from within the Specialist Crime Directorate budget.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Tim Rees, MPA.

For more information contact:

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

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