The ‘Safer London Panel’ – MPA’s New Citizen Panel

Report: 9
Date: 26 July 2004
By: Clerk

Summary

This report describes the construction of the new citizen panel (the Safer London Panel), and presents the findings from the very first panel event, a workshop on policing priorities for 2005/06.

A. Recommendation

1. the Office of Public Management report on the findings of the first Safer London Panel workshop be forwarded to the Planning Performance and Review Committee for inclusion in the process of setting policing priorities for 2005/06; and

2. members note the priorities expressed by a representative group of Londoners in respect of policing in the capital, namely police visibility, preventative approaches to crime, communication and information, working with other agencies, and strengthening relationships with the community.

B. Supporting information

1. A report to the Consultation Committee in June 2003 recommended the establishment of an MPA citizen panel. The Committee approved the recommendation and a tendering process was entered into with a number of research companies. Two were short listed and a contract has been awarded to the Office of Public Management (OPM) for the recruitment and establishment of a 3,000 strong citizen panel. The contract also covers the maintenance of the panel for one year, and assistance in the mounting of consultation events during that time.

2. Citizen panels have become established as one of the most cost effective consultation tools. For example, the table below, taken from a national survey of Crime and Disorder Partnerships (Police Research Series, Paper 148, Home Office 2002) shows that citizen panels scored highest on usefulness, with 83% of the partnerships who used them saying that they were useful. It is believed that were the survey to be repeated today the number of panels in use would be considerably larger, and the usefulness figure the same or greater.

3. The MPA panel has a nominal size of 3,000 members. (Actual numbers will fluctuate from time to time as people leave the capital, fall sick or leave the panel in some other way).

4. 3,000 members puts the Safer London Panel at the large end of the spectrum of panel sizes, but it is necessary in order to be able to identify sub groups (by age group, ethnicity or place of residence for example) of sufficient size to permit statistically meaningful consultation.

5. Although the panel’s 3,000 members were initially selected at random, the final membership has been screened to ensure that it represents the profile of London as a whole in ethnic origin, age, gender and disability, as well as location within the capital. Thus, we can fairly claim to be engaging with 3,000 'typical Londoners'. As individuals they may happen to belong to particular minorities or to other community groups, but as far as their panel membership is concerned they represent London.

6. Panel members will be consulted on all elements concerning policing, crime and disorder and their opinions will be fed back into the MPA. Over the course of the next 11 months there will be two postal surveys sent out to all 3,000 panellists, and another one or two workshops involving 50 –100 individuals each.

7. The panel had its launch and first consultation session on 29 June, at a workshop hosted by Richard Barnes, then acting Chair of MPA, when 55 panel members discussed their policing priorities for next year.

8. The feedback received at and since the workshop has been extremely positive, with participants commenting favourably both on the Authority’s initiative in convening a panel of Londoners to discuss policing priorities, and also on the quality of the discussions.

9. The broad areas considered at the workshop were: dealing with anti-social behaviour; tackling serious crime; tackling terrorism; and relations between police and the community. OPM’s report on this consultation is attached as Appendix 1 for information, and will be submitted to Planning, Performance and Review Committee in due course as a contribution to the process of setting policing priorities for 2005/06.

10. One striking feature of the workshop was the emergence of a number of key overall themes concerning policing, which surfaced in all of the discussions on specific topics. These key themes were police visibility, preventative approaches to crime, communication and information, working with other agencies, and strengthening relationships with the community.

C. Race and equality impact

The Safer London Panel has been designed specifically to reflect London’s diversity along a number of key dimensions. It also provides a new mechanism for engaging with certain hard to reach groups, and in both these ways it will contribute to the consultation requirement of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.

D. Financial implications

The costs of the Citizen Panel are £112,700 for 12 months to May 2005. A one year contract has been let.

E. Background papers

Report of the Office of Public Management on the first Safer London Panel Workshop (attached as Appendix 1).

F. Contact details

Report author: Tim Rees, Head – Community Engagement Unit

For more information contact:

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

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