Annual report

Report: 14
Date: 16 June 2005
By: Chief Executive and Clerk

Summary

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

A. Recommendation

That the Committee receive the annual report.

B. Supporting information

1. The Community Engagement Committee has a number of responsibilities. These include:

• developing a community engagement strategy and policies for the MPA and monitoring arrangements by which the MPS engages with local communities in the delivery of local policing services and building safer neighbourhoods.
• considering all matters relating to MPA and MPS Community Engagement strategies and ensuring that such processes engage with and reflect the views of London’s diverse communities;
• reviewing the results of community engagement undertaken to inform the policing plan;
• considering all matters relating to Community and Police Consultative Groups and Independent Custody Visiting Panels, including approval of their annual funding; and
• advising the Authority of ways of raising the profile of the MPA and making the community and partner organisations aware of its role and work.

2. The Committee has met five times during the year. There are eight members of the Committee. Abdal Ullah has been Chair for the year and Aneeta Prem Deputy Chair. Other members have been Kirsten Hearn, Peter Herbert, John Roberts, Nicky Gavron, Damien Hockney and Jenny Jones. Some of the major issues considered and reviewed by the Committee over the last year are described below.

Community Engagement Strategy

3. During the last year the Committee has overseen the development of the MPA’s Community Development Strategy. In order to achieve its mission the MPA has adopted a Corporate Strategy with five strategic goals. The corporate strategy sets out the priorities that the MPA intends to achieve over the next three years. The MPA’S Community Engagement Strategy is centred on one of the five strategic goals, to:

• Transform community engagement to help Londoners secure more responsive policing at local level.

A second strategic goal is to:

• Work with the MPS to achieve cultural change throughout the service to ensure that everyone in London, including black and minority ethnic communities, can gain and retain confidence in policing.

4. The second of the strategic goals is a crucial aspect of the first. In order to transform community engagement, gaining and retaining community confidence in policing is essential.

5. This strategy sets the framework for the MPA to focus, direct and monitor the performance of the MPS in regard to community engagement and communities gaining confidence in the MPS.

6. Strengthening communities’ engagement and giving them greater influence over policing is at the heart of the MPAs Community Engagement Strategy. Effective community engagement is central to good practice and good governance of policing.

7. One of the most important challenges for the MPS is how the policing needs of London’s diverse population can be met in partnership with, and in a manner, which their differences can be taken into account effectively. The agenda for citizen-focused policing calls for a much sharper focus on connecting the delivery of policing with the real involvement and requirements of Londoners. The processes through which this will be achieved is through community engagement.

8. The MPAs Community Engagement Strategy recognises a variety of approaches at the strategic level (service-wide, pan-London), the operational level (borough level), and community level (neighbourhood and ward level) need to be developed and implemented that empower residents to express their views and influence how their particular policing needs are met.

9. The Community Engagement Strategy also recognises and supports two distinct strands to successful community-police engagement:

1. Residents willing and able to get involved (i.e. supply side).
2. A police service willing and able to involve and be influenced by the viewpoints of Londoners (i.e. demand side).

On the one hand the MPA will consider and ensure effective ways are in place to increase Londoners awareness and understanding of policing issues. It will also support the capacity and willingness of individuals and communities to work collectively to shape and strengthen the civic governance of policing in London.

10. It is also important that the MPA ensures that the MPS engages with Londoners in an open and constructive way as possible. In mainstreaming community engagement through all levels and facets of the Service, the MET must be able to demonstrate that it is engaging all Londoners in delivering policing services. A prime governance responsibility of the MPA, as reflected in this Strategy is to hold the MPS to account to ensure that community engagement is fully integrated and mainstreamed throughout the MPS. Through its responsibilities for monitoring, for scrutiny, for developing and testing exemplary projects, and promoting best practice, the MPA will seek to improve the MPS approach to community engagement.

Annual police priority setting

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

12. 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 draw on the findings of other relevant recent studies and reports and included consultation feedback from the first event with the MPA’s newly established Safer London Panel, a 3,000 member citizens’ panel that is demographically representative of London’s population.

13. Key themes emerging from all these discussions-and that are recurring and persistent themes from previous years-is that Londoners continue to demand greater police visibility, more efforts on preventative approaches to crime, better communication and information, and more effective partnerships and working with other agencies. Another overarching theme emerging from these consultations that the Community Engagement Committee considered particularly important is the demand for greater local community-police interaction and accountability. Londoners want a much greater emphasis on a more accountable, ‘diversified’ and ‘localised’ planning process.

Supporting local community police engagement

14. Over the last year, the Community Engagement 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. The total amount allocated by the Committee to CPCGs for 2005/06 is just under £900,000.

15. An ongoing 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 CPCGs themselves, including two bookshops in November 2004; with Borough Commanders; with officers of the GLA, as well as with staff and Members of the MPA, The Community Engagement Committee updated and revised the Guidelines, Criteria and Application Form for 2005/06 funding of the CPCGs. 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. In addition, the establishment of the Appeals Panel comprised of Committee Members has further reinforced the principles of an open, transparent and accountable process.

16. 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 continues to be 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, but notes the considerable efforts being made to involve ‘hard to reach’ groups.

17. In pursuing one of the five strategic goals of the MPAs Corporate Strategy to transform community Engagement to help Londoners secure more responsive policing at the local level - the Community Engagement Committee has been concerned that current arrangements for funding community engagement has simply been adopted from an inherited system from the period before London had a police authority. The Committee has also recognised that it is based on a highly static approach where the pre-eminence of CPCGs as the preferred means of engagement is taken for granted and the incorrect assumption that the MPAs primary interests and responsibility is at the local level rather than strategic and PAN-London level. The Committee also reiterates its concern that it is based on the false assumption that the MPA is sufficiently resourced to be able to carry out a local community development, a community engagement, an organisational development as well as a grant management role across 32 boroughs. In the light of all these factors, the Committee has directed that a complete review of the MPA’s role and function in funding community engagement at the borough level be undertaken. An options paper as a necessary first stage, is the subject of a separate report elsewhere on the agenda.

Community Safety Boards

18. With respect to developing and testing different approaches to community police engagement at the borough level, in the two boroughs where CPCGs do not exist, Hammersmith and Fulham and in Islington, the Committee would like to highlight the establishment of Community Safety Boards.

19. In wishing to add value to existing local consultative arrangements, and to complement and build on current initiatives such as Safer Neighbourhoods, the MPA has been developing and testing a borough-based model of Community Safety Board (CSB). Community Safety Boards are inclusive and representative of the local population, particularly those groups that interact with police in disproportionate numbers. The intent is to increase the capacity of community members not only to be informed of local crime and disorder activity, but also, in a more proactive way, to monitor and actively influence local police decision making, plans and priorities. That is why the Community Safety Boards have a seat at the table of the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships. A number of other boroughs have already expressed interest in this approach and some of London’s existing Community Police Consultative Groups are looking to adapt and restructure themselves along the lines of a Community Safety Board.

Independent Custody Visiting Panels

20. Each year the Community Engagement 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.

21. The total amount allocated by the Committee for ICVPs for 2005/06 is approximately £300,000. In recognising the MPA’s 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 included the level of training provided, 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 was submitted to the Committee in February 2005, enables the MPA’s support to ICVs to be based on a much more effective and sounder footing.

22. To ensure a careful and thorough implementation of the reform programme the Committee has established a Programme Review Board. It is chaired by the Vice Chair of the Committee and Lead Member for ICVPs, Aneeta Prem, together with representatives from the Custody Directorate of the MPS, from Independent Custody Visitors, as well as from the MPA.

23. A conference was held in February 2005 for all London Independent Custody Visitors and as a result of its success it has been agreed that this will be an annual event.

Community Engagement at the pan-London level

24. As previously noted, the MPAs support of community engagement has largely been expended at the local level. Over the last year, the Committee has begun to enlarge and strengthen its pan-London initiatives in gathering Londoners views on overall strategic policing issues. Key actions have included:

1. Ensuring that the newly established 3,000 member Safer London Panel is fully operational and its collective viewpoint is disseminated. This has already been achieved through the MPAs decision-making process on the annual police priority setting, and is the subject of a separate report on this committee’s agenda from the MPS. A Safer London Panel newsletter has also been developed and is widely distributed.
2. Officers have developed and strengthened over the last year, working partnerships with appropriate institutions such as with the GLA family, with GOL, APA, ALG, the Home Office and others, as well as with experts and scholars in the field.
3. Of particular note over the last year in developing partnerships with community based organisations to undertake community engagement with specific target groups has been the work with the disability communities. The Committee has worked with the Greater London Action on Disability (GLAD) in developing a background paper and held a one-day conference on 7 October 2004 to identify the policing priorities for disabled people in London. The results of this process have led to establishment of an MPA oversight working group and an MPS implementation group to drive forward the disabled peoples policing agenda.

Other community engagement initiatives

25. In addition to the above, the Committee has also dealt with a number of other significant community engagement matters including:

• Home Office White Paper on police reform ‘building communities, beating crime’.
• Safer neighbourhoods initiative and the development of effective systems for community engagement.
• Citizen focused policing programme.
• Findings of the public attitude survey
• MPS community engagement website
• Distribution of partnership funds at borough level.
• MPS measuring community consultation survey
• Immigration detainees
• E-policing
• MPS youth strategy
• MPS consultation training
• Home Office report ’Involving the Public: the Role of Police Authorities

Challenges for the coming year

26. The Community Engagement Committee faces a number of challenges in the coming year.

• First is the need to translate Community Engagement Strategy into action. This requires the MPA to consider its own organisational arrangements, its local funding arrangements and resources necessary to move the agenda from not just consultation and passive consent to a proactive, involved partnership.
• Secondly it requires the MPA to consider how best to support and strengthen the level of community interest, skills, engagement and influence upon policing in London, including the development and provision of appropriate volunteer training.
• Thirdly it requires a more rigorous and robust assessment of existing methods and structures of community engagement and the development of outcome measures to enhance the effectiveness of the MPAs scrutiny responsibility.
• Fourthly it requires the developments of performance indicators and standards by which the MPA can better support and enhance partnership work and community engagement at the borough level.
• And fifth it requires of the Community Engagement Committee to more purposively recognise, support and disseminate ‘best practice’.

27. Over the next year the resourcing, organisational structure, staffing and implementation of the reform programme of the Independent Custody Visiting Scheme will be at a critical juncture in ensuring the MPA can effectively manage and administer its statutory responsibilities. The Committee will expect to receive regular reports not only for the implementation of the reform programme but also of emerging issues and concerns that have been identified by Independent Custody Visitors.

C. Race and equality impact

1. Both the content and process of the Community Engagement Committee’s work over the last year and for the future has been purposively designed to ensure that this work is more inclusive and representative of all sectors of London’s’ population. London’s diversity include characteristics not only of race, ethnicity, language, immigrant and refugee status, it also includes huge differences in crime and safety experience - and thereby different policing needs - based on age, gender, sexual orientation and mental and physical ability. Further layers of ever increasing diversity that impacts upon policing - and thereby methods of community engagement - include the complex and overlapping differences and divisions that exists in terms of people’s value and beliefs, lifestyles, life chances and levels of disadvantage and deprivation.

2. An integral part of the MPA’s community engagement activities has been, and will continue to take full cognisance of these dramatically changing demographics of London’s population. The complex nature of this diversity continues to require greater urgency for more purposeful community engagement processes that are accessible and equitable for all sectors of the population.

D. Financial implications

There are no direct financial implications to this report

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Tim Rees

For more information contact:

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

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