MPS Community Engagement Strategy implementation plan

Report: 11
Date: 16 June 2005
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report updates members on how the MPS will put in an infrastructure to enable the MPS to implement the parts of MPA’s Community Engagement Strategy that fall within the remit of the MPS.

A. Recommendation

 That

1. the report be noted; and
2. Members endorse the plan of action outlined in the report.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. The MPA put forward its draft Community Engagement Strategy to the Community Engagement Committee 3 February 2005. This report also presented the MPS Consultation Strategy as an appendix.

2. This report builds on that previous report. It outlines how the MPS will put in infrastructure to enable the MPS to implement the parts of MPA’s Community Engagement Strategy that fall within the remit of the MPS.

3. This report does not present a final version of the MPS Consultation Strategy presented as an appendix to the 3 February report. This report outlines how that strategy will sit within the MPS community engagement infrastructure.

Structure of MPS response

4. In considering how the MPS will implement the MPA Community Engagement Strategy the MPS took the following issues into account:

• The need for the MPS to have a clear strategy that could be owned by MPS units and staff.
• The spread of MPS units responsible for activities that fall within the scope of the Community Engagement Strategy.

MPS Community Engagement Strategy

5. The legislative lead for engagement falls to the MPA. However, with the rise in prominence of community engagement through Citizen Focus and other initiatives such as the Home Office white paper on Building Communities, Beating Crime, it is important that the MPS is clear on:

• What it’s role in community engagement is
• What activities the MPS is responsible for
• How these will be implemented, monitored and reviewed within the MPS.

The structure of the MPS

6. The MPS has a number of units that are responsible for delivering (often) discrete aspects of engagement. Those identified so far are:

• Safer Neighbourhoods
• Strategic Research
• Directorate of Public Affairs
• Strategic Consultation
• Citizen Focus

7. It is therefore suggested that the most practical way to deliver a coherent strategy within the MPS is for individual units to lead on ‘strands’ of engagement that will be strategies in their own right.

Proposed Strategy Structure

• Community Engagement Strategy
  Lead: Citizen Focus
  • Communication
    Lead: DPA
  • (Opinion) Research
    Lead: Strategic Research
  • Consultation
    Lead: Strategic Consultation
  • Partnership
    Lead: Safer Neighbourhoods
  • Volunteers
    Lead: Safer Neighbourhoods

This proposed structure:

• Covers all aspects of engagement as laid out in the draft MPA strategy.
• Enables existing individual lead units to take responsibility for delivering the work that is already within their remit.
• Ensures that this work is set within the bigger framework of improving engagement.
• Enables the MPS to respond to the Citizen Focus agenda.

8. Ensuring effective engagement is fundamental to the MPS ability to provide Citizen Focused policing. Therefore Citizen Focus will lead on ensuring the implementation of the Community Engagement Strategy, which will in turn provide a robust and coherent governance structure for the individual strategies contained within it.

9. The central theme of Citizen Focus will be designing the experience for the citizen to meet their needs and wants. An effective Community Engagement Strategy will underpin the MPS ability to engage with partners, community organisations and the ordinary citizen.

10. Effective engagement will build understanding of the issues and trade offs inherent in providing a police service that meets the needs of citizens. This will build an improved relationship with the citizen and a renewed commitment to the ethos of policing by consent, facilitating a citizen more willing and better able to assist the MPS with information. The long-term outcome of which will be better performance and an enhanced MPS ability to meet policing targets.

Work carried out to date

11. The MPS Internal Consultancy Group (ICG) in conjunction with the Strategic Consultation Unit has written a draft MPS community engagement strategy. This introduces the background, scope and principles behind effective community engagement and outlines the structure proposed above, which will enable the MPS to deliver effective engagement. Initial scoping of the proposed structure has received a favourable response from individual owner units.

12. A document has been drawn up outlining the activities that will need to be done to put in place an agreed community engagement strategy. This is presented in Appendix 1. It is anticipated that implementing the strategy will occur in three phases.

• Phase 1 – Planning
• Phase 2 – Implementation
• Phase 3 – Monitoring and Review

Next Steps

Phase 1 – planning

13. The activities outlined in Appendix 1 will be carried out to complete the planning phase. This will result in a Community Engagement Strategy that, in line with the government’s guidelines on strategy development, is:

• Developed with, and communicated effectively to, all those with a stake in the strategy or involved in its funding or implementation.
• Clear about objectives, relative priorities and trade-offs.
• Underpinned by a rich understanding of causes, trends, opportunities, threats and possible futures.
• Based on a realistic understanding of the effectiveness of different policy instruments and the capacities of institutions (a strategy that works well on paper but not in practice is of little use).
• Creative - designing and discovering new possibilities.
• Designed with effective mechanisms for adaptability in the light of experience.

14. Effective planning and widespread consultation both internally and externally to ensure structure and content is appropriate is the key to success in any strategy work. The absence of such preparation in a community engagement strategy would undermine its effectiveness and demonstrate the organisation’s lack of ability in engagement more than in any other instance.

15. The appraisal criteria that will be used for this process is that which is applicable to all decisions about public service action, and address the suitability, feasibility and acceptability of each option:

• Suitability – Do the proposed actions address the key issues and will they be able to deliver desired outcomes?
• Feasibility – Can the proposed actions be delivered with the potential system capabilities and resources?
• Acceptability – Is there sufficient senior MPS and public support to legitimise the proposed actions?

Phase 2 – implementation

Governance

16. The need to ensure the MPS can deliver Citizen Focus calls for implementation of the Community Engagement Strategy to be linked to the implementation of Citizen Focused policing. As such the proposed governance structures to ensure implementation of the Community Engagement Strategy sit within those for Citizen Focus. This will ensure the strategy is more than a paper document setting out aspirations for the MPS and includes coherent aims and objectives.

17. As an identified Citizen Focus project it is proposed that a Community Engagement Strategy Board sit below, and reports to, the Citizen Focus Programme Board. The Community Engagement Strategy Board will consist of the individual strategy stand leads and ensure activity between strands is co-ordinated where appropriate.

Phase 3 – monitoring and review

18. Monitoring and review of the Community Engagement strategy will focus on two areas:

• Ensuring the MPS is delivering on the strategy
• Ensuring it is the right strategy and continues to meet both internal and external demands on the MPA/MPS i.e. MPS officers and staff, Home Office; partner agencies, community organisations and citizens.

C. Race and equality impact

The results of the Community Engagement survey carried out in 2004 indicated that the MPA hard to reach groups were not always consulted systematically throughout the organisation. The implementation and monitoring of a Community Engagement Strategy, as outlined in this report, will 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.

D. Financial implications

Activities outlined in Phase 1 can be met within the existing corporate planning group budget and require no extra resources. Any additional resource requirements identified to carry out Phases 2 and 3 will be negotiated with the Citizen Focus Programme Board where appropriate.

E. Background papers

None

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

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