Update on the MPS consultation and community engagement website

Report: 14
Date: 3 February 2005
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report updates and seeks endorsement from members on the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Consultation and Community Engagement website currently being developed by the MPS Strategic Consultation Unit. The report outlines progress on the five phases of the website proposed in the report presented to the Committee in October 2004.

A. Recommendation

That

1. members note the report; and
2. members endorse the plan of action outlined in the report.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. A report was presented to the Community Engagement Committee in October 2004 outlining 5 proposed phases in the development of a consultation and community engagement website. The website was being developed by the MPS; aimed initially at MPS staff and later at the public. This report outlines the progress made to date by the Strategic Consultation Unit in setting up the proposed phases.

2. This report outlines and updates members on the progress of each of the phases proposed in the earlier report.

Phase 1 - MPS response to external consultation

3. This allows detailed results from the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA)/MPS public consultation for the 2005/6 Policing Plan to be fed through the MPS to the appropriate managers and policy makers. Ensuring that the results of the consultation are seen and where appropriate acted upon. The process then allows the comments and actions taken as a result of the consultation to be collated and fed back to the original public participants.

4. To achieve the above the website is ‘live’ in three stages.

5. Stage 1 - Information provided by partner organisations, community groups, other stakeholders and the general public displayed on internal MPS website in an easy to navigate format. Information displayed in the 38 issue groups that were identified in the public sessions. (i.e. anti-social behaviour and low-level crime; alcohol and alcohol related crime; and visibility, numbers of police and reassurance)

6. Approximately 120 invited MPS staff able to view the information and comment on line by filling out text boxes ‘on line’. Staff were selected because they were either the lead in a specialist subject, or headed a unit that had some responsibility for a subject. These specialist staff were invited to comment on specific issues they were involved with. Additionally, all Borough Operational Command Units (BOCU) Commanders were invited to respond on behalf of their BOCU on any of the issues raised, and in particular on issues they felt they were either particularly strong on or they had challenges with.

7. Website ‘live’ for approximately five weeks from 22 November 2004 – 17 December 2004 during which time 59% (72 staff) of those invited commented on line. Staff were asked to answer specific questions about each issue. These questions were: ‘How is your unit/Borough currently addressing or planning to address the issues raised above?’ ‘If there were no restraints, how would your unit/Borough like to address the issues raised above?’ and ‘What key barriers are there for your unit/ borough in addressing the issues raised above?’

8. At time of writing this report the comments are being analysed and put into a summary report by the external consultants administering the site. Below is an example from the draft summary report outlining the responses from three of the issue groups:

• Anti-social behaviour and low-level crime
  Tackling anti-social behaviour is recognised as a priority and all those responding have specific strategies in place, ranging from Safer Neighbourhood teams to partnerships and proactive involvement in schools and initiatives to reduce drink-related offences. The main limitations perceived are around funding and therefore the staff available to provide a visible police presence where and when it is required.
• Alcohol and alcohol related crime
  This issue has to be seen in the context of the wider national debate about licensing hours and their relation to binge-drinking and other alcohol-fuelled nuisances. The general response by the MPS is to identify problem times and areas and target resources accordingly, though it is apparent that resources are never likely to be entirely adequate in the face of this growing issue.
• Visibility, numbers of police and reassurance
  The responses here indicate the extent to which it is recognised that a visible police presence is the best way to offer reassurance; equally, however, tackling and preventing crime also contributes, albeit indirectly, to reassurance. So as ever there is a constant juggling of resources to meet a range of needs.

9. Stage 2 - The website is ‘live’ again and invited staff are able to view both the summary report and all the individual comments made, attributed to individual staff. Staff also have the opportunity to comment on and evaluate the process. Session 2 ‘live’ for approximately four weeks from 18 January 2005 – 04 February 2005.

10. Stage 3 – Final report fed back as follows: to staff, the MPA, the original public participants who gave us their views, and made available to the general public on the MPS website. Thus demonstrating what the MPS has done as a result of views received. This report will be available from mid February 2005.

11. This facility within the website is being used initially to feed the results `of the policing plan consultation through the MPS. It is hoped that the facility will be used to feed other future consultation and engagement results through the MPS as appropriate.

12. Benefits to MPS of this feedback facility

• Confident we know what the public/partners concerns are.
• Confidence that the MPS is responding to these concerns.
• Able to see and learn from good initiatives carried out within individual units.
• Do not have to reinvent the wheel –time and effort saved.
• Able to see where effort is being duplicated within the MPS.
• Demonstrates that the MPS is listening to the public as required by the governments’ ‘Citizen Focus’ agenda and soon to be mandated in the ‘Quality of Service Agreement’.

Phase 2 - MPS practitioner information

13. The October 2004 report proposed that the site would provide a forum for consultation and community engagement practitioner information to be easily accessed by all relevant MPS staff.

14. Subsequently liaison with the Citizen Focus and Safer Neighbourhoods Units identified that the Safer Neighbourhood unit were keen to develop their own web portal for their staff. The priority for action for the Strategic Consultation Unit was to ensure that consistent messages are given to Safer Neighbourhoods teams on what they are trying to achieve with consultation and engagement activities and how they should go about it.

15. Sources identified that need to give a consistent message include:

• Planning and Managing Consultation and Community Engagement Training
• Safer Neighbourhoods Website
• Corporate ENGAGE! Tool (see below)
• Various sets of Engagement/Consultation Guidelines

16. Work is currently underway looking at all of the above sources. The Safer Neighbourhoods Team is hoping to have their internal MPS website live by the beginning of February 2005. The MPS Strategic Consultation Unit is concentrating on providing the team with coherent information to populate the consultation and engagement parts of the site.

Corporate ENGAGE! tool

17. This is an innovative web based tool to assist MPS consultation practitioners in designing a consultation process. The tool follows a series of fundamental questions that need to be considered to help the practitioner choose the right tools and techniques for the specific process they want to design. These questions are to do with objectives, target audience, the sensitivity of the issues and the amount of time available.

18. Working through this interactive tool helps to find the right tools for the situation. Each question provides some information on the implications of the choices made. If answers are chosen that would not result in good practice an opportunity is given to revise the previous responses.

19. Throughout the process links are given to useful information and guidance on designing and running a consultation or engagement process. The aim of the tool is both to increase the practitioner’s knowledge of consultation and engagement as well as help plan the specific activity that is required.

20. At present the tool is in ‘concept’ stage. This means that all the pages have been written and the underlying database populated with consultation and engagement information. At present the Strategic Consultation Unit are liaising with the external designers and the Safer Neighbourhoods Unit to ensure that Safer Neighbourhoods examples of good practice are incorporated into the pages as appropriate. The next stage will be to brand the pages and make them look interesting and user friendly. It is anticipated that the tool will be ready for testing by practitioners in March 2005.

Priority projects

21. In accordance with priority projects identified by the Citizen Focus Team, ongoing work in providing consultation and engagement practitioner information is concentrating on ensuring that Safer Neighbourhood officers are adequately equipped to carry out their role. Once this has been provided emphasis will be realigned to ensure that corporate consultation carried out by policy makers and others has adequate guidance available.

Phase 3 - MPS consultation and engagement document archive

22. As outlined in the previous report this facility is to enable central and local MPS units to ‘upload’ the results of consultation activity, i.e. consultation results on specific policy areas or Safer Neighbourhood locally identified priorities. These documents will then be available to download by other central and local units.

23. Further discussions with the Safer Neighbourhoods Unit revealed that at present they intend to provide similar information on the results of consultation on their own site. As a result, work on this facility has been suspended at present, and will be revisited when emphasis is switched back to providing adequate guidance to corporate consultation practitioners.

Phase 4 - MPS practitioner discussion forums

24. These will allow those undertaking community engagement and consultation activity within the MPS to pose questions to other MPS practitioners. Facilitating the spread of best practice and a ‘community’ of practitioners within the MPS.

25. As with Phase 3 above, this facility will be included in the Safer Neighbourhoods site and work will continue for corporate consultation practitioners in the near future.

Phase 5 - public pages

26. At present this allows the public to;

• View the results of the corporate consultation on the policing plan from the last two years.
• View a summary of the policing plan that was produced taking into account public priorities.
• Leave their details to enable the MPS to invite them to take part in the next corporate consultation for the policing plan.

27. Once more information has been collected from the internal web pages and processes and procedures put in place to allow us to provide more information, it is intended that these pages will allow the public to:

• View the results of past consultation and engagement activity (i.e. those collated via the internal pages) and the MPS response.
• View details of current and upcoming consultation and engagement activity (i.e. specialist consultations or local Safer Neighbourhood meetings)
• Where appropriate, allow sign up to a variety of new consultation activities (a text box facility would allow contact details to be left to be subsequently forwarded or entered onto a database)
• View local identified priorities and/or leave details of own priorities (where locally identified Safer Neighbourhood priorities do not fit with their own they could leave alternative priorities which would be forwarded to their local team).

Summary

28. With the exception of the Safer Neighbourhood focus, work has continued on this project as anticipated from the report submitted to the committee in October last year. It is expected that work will continue as planned.

29. Liaison with the Citizen Focus Team ensures that the work outlined within this report, which fits into the ‘Improving Engagement’ Citizen Focus work stream is prioritised along with work to deliver the other Citizen Focus work streams.

C. Equality and diversity implications

1. The results of the Community Engagement survey indicated that the MPA identified hard to reach groups are not consulted systematically throughout the MPS. This report outlines sites that will build on the steps already put in place to address this issue. These steps will further ensure that all MPS staff carrying out consultation are aware of the need to and importance of consulting with all areas of the community including hard to reach groups.

2. The public phase of the website will provide a ‘one stop’ access point for the public, community groups and partners to find out about and take part in consultation and community engagement activity carried out by the MPS.

3. It is acknowledged that not all people have access to the Internet. However, it is proposed that the site will be supplemented by other methods of communication and consultation.

D. Financial implications

The project is managed and co-ordinated by the MPS Strategic Consultation Unit. Set up costs and phase one of the project have been met out of the existing MPS Strategic Consultation Unit budget. Subsequent phases of the project area joint venture between more than one MPS unit. Where additional funding for further phases will be required, where appropriate it will be negotiated with other MPS Business Groups.

E. Background papers

• Proposed MPS Consultation and Community Engagement Website, presented to the Community Engagement Committee 14 October 2004.

F. Contact details

Report author: Jane Wilkin, Strategic Consultation Manager, Strategic Consultation Unit, MPS Corporate Planning Group.

For more information contact:

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

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback