Measuring the impact of community police engagement

Report: 7
Date: 1 September 2005
By: the Chief Executive and Clerk

Summary

This report provides an update for Members on work being carried out by officers in the MPA Community Engagement Unit to develop a sound methodology for measuring the impact of community-police engagement activity in London.

A. Recommendation

That

1. the progress already made towards developing a set of measures with which to evaluate the impact of community police engagement be noted;
2. approval to the proposed ‘next steps’ for this project (paragraphs 19 – 22 inclusive) be given; and
3. members undertake to champion this methodology, once developed, to secure its profile and widespread adoption.

B. Supporting information

1. The MPA has identified the need to develop outcome–orientated performance measures for community-police engagement activity. In its 2004-5 work plan the Community Engagement Committee identified the need to develop appropriate standards for community-police partnership and engagement arrangements in order to increase its capacity to scrutinise effectively this area of work.

2. In assuming its oversight and scrutiny responsibilities over the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), the MPA requires a robust set of criteria by which it can hold the MPS to account in respect of its community engagement activity. The MPA is also concerned that community engagement is fully integrated and mainstreamed throughout the MPS. The MPA therefore requires a set of measures and standards for community engagement, which will allow it – and Londoners as a whole – to evaluate more effectively the MPS’s engagement with the communities of London.

3. In addition, the MPA is concerned with bolstering Londoners’ willingness and capacity to work collectively and effectively to shape and strengthen policing in London. Londoners therefore need to know the criteria by which to measure the effectiveness of their own engagement with the police.

Context

4. The principle of involving, developing and increasing the participation of communities, service users and stakeholders in decision-making regarding public service provision is now widely accepted throughout Government. With civil renewal, citizen focus and community engagement high on the agenda of all public sector agencies, there is increasing urgency for the MPA to measure the effectiveness of its work in these areas in a robust and organised fashion.

5. This task also contributes to progress towards agreed MPA goals, as stated in the Community Engagement Committee’s Work Plan: ‘transform community engagement to help Londoners secure more responsive policing at a local level; enlarge the MPA’s community engagement at a pan-London level and inform the whole of the MPA’s decision-making and planning process, including the annual police priority setting process; and support through the Community Engagement Committee the MPA’s scrutiny and governance role’.

6. It also relates to five of the work streams identified in the draft MPA Community Engagement Strategy: ‘governance and oversight; standards of community engagement; channelling the results of community engagement activity; promoting best practice; and strengthening the community voice’.

7. In addition, this task advances the MPA’s position in relation to three of the priorities laid down in its Corporate Strategy: ‘transform community engagement to help Londoners secure more responsive policing at a local level; the Authority will hold the Commissioner rigorously to account for continuing improvement in the effective operational and organisational performance of the Metropolitan Police Service; and drive the Metropolitan Police Service to make most efficient and cost-conscious use of its officers, staff and other available resources’.

Defining ‘community-police engagement’

8. The MPA, in line with the directions of the Home Office, has adopted a definition of community-police engagement that moves it beyond the traditional notion of ‘policing by consent’ to a more proactive, dynamic and accountable process of cooperation and collaboration between the police and the populace. 21st century community-police engagement is not merely public relations, it is not just community relations, and it is not simply consultation and satisfaction surveys. Rather, it is a proactive approach to harnessing the energies and knowledge of communities and partnerships, not only, retrospectively, to hold the police to account, but also, prospectively, to help identify problems, negotiate and influence priorities for action, and participate in shaping solutions.

9. Community-police engagement in this context then means a much fuller spectrum of community involvement in policing, from basic information-provision and consultation, through increasingly intensive participatory levels, to community control of resources and decision-making.

Focus on outcomes

10. This modern definition of community-police engagement requires a more sophisticated set of performance measures than is currently available. It is no longer appropriate merely to identify the mechanisms by which community-police engagement is occurring and the sheer quantity of such activity taking place. The focus must now shift from outputs to outcomes. Questions such as ‘How many members of the public attended the meeting organised by the police?’ should be replaced with questions such as ‘Did the input the public gave at the meeting affect police decision-making?’

11. Much work has already been done at the MPA and elsewhere on community engagement mechanisms. This report lays its emphasis instead on how information derived from community engagement activity is used. Determining the effectiveness and utility of community-police engagement necessitates a much clearer focus on evidence-based outcomes and actual impact upon strategic thinking, policy development and service provision.

Aims

12. Developing and applying a methodology for measuring the impact of community-police engagement will enable the MPA and partners to measure the impact of individual community-police engagement activities. This will allow the MPA to identify areas of strength and weakness in current practice and justify (or otherwise) MPA and MPS present expenditure on community-police engagement activity. In the light of such assessments it should be possible then to develop more effective methods of community-police engagement for the future, with the additional benefit of increasing community participation in such activity. This would lead directly to decision-making within the MPS and MPA which is better informed, more widely owned, more transparent, and more effective, and police service planning and delivery which is more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the communities served.

Framework

13. The national Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF) provides a basis for measuring, assessing and comparing police force performance. Citizen Focus is one of the six PPAF domains, yet the outcome measures in this domain are concerned almost exclusively with basic user-satisfaction rates. The performance measures for community-police engagement contained in this Home Office framework are thus severely limited.

14. It is therefore proposed to develop a set of practical performance measures which will enable initially the MPA, and subsequently the MPS and members of the community, to perform a more critical and constructive evaluation of present community-police engagement activity.

15. The development of the performance measures detailed here will assist in proving or disproving the causal link often asserted between a given community-police engagement intervention and a particular positive outcome. Such outcomes might include reductions in crime, anti-social behaviour and fear of crime, and increases in the public’s sense of security, levels of involvement and ownership over London’s policing and confidence in the police.

Selection of measures

16. Initially a list of possible measures was generated which was impractically long (90+ items). This list was then reduced to the list which follows (30 items). The reduction process to-date has involved prioritising the lists according to the following nine criteria, which are suggested by the New Economics Foundation and the Community Development Foundation:

• Action - there must be an action that can be taken as a result of collecting data on a particular measure.
• Importance - measures chosen must be meaningful and important to stakeholders as well as evaluators.
• Measurability - it must be possible to allocate data to the measure.
• Simplicity - collecting the data must be relatively easy, and whatever data is collected must be capable of being widely understood.
• Causality - the measure must be clearly related to the quality it sets out to assess.
• Desirability - there must be general consensus about which direction of movement in the quality measured is desirable.
• Reality - change in a measurement must reflect some change in reality, not just a change in measurement procedures.
• Attributability - change in measurement must, as far as possible, be attributable to interventions that form part of the programme under evaluation rather than ‘external shocks’.
• Practicability - the data required for the measure must be available at the area scale required and at the time intervals required.

Proposed measures

17. In this paper performance measures pertaining to community-police engagement have been grouped under three headings: structure, process, and effect. This subdivision reflects the different but interdependent levels at which community-police engagement can be assessed.

18. The following draft lists of measures under these three headings are therefore proposed as profitably applicable to community-police engagement activity in London:

Structure

• Number of examples of realignment or restructuring of the police’s resources as a result of community input
• Existence of clear protocols for feeding consultatively-generated information into the police service planning process
• Existence of clear mechanisms for community engagement good practice to be disseminated within the police service
• Percentage of police initiatives/operations which feature some community engagement activity
• Percentage of police budget/resource allocation determined by the community
• Percentage of the police’s performance indicators which are determined by the public
• Percentage of police Best Value and Review team members who are members of the public
• Percentage of police management board / steering group members who are members of the public
• Percentage of police employees performing community engagement activity who say they are familiar with the police service’s corporate community engagement guidance and resources
• Number of ways of accessing the police which community members are able to identify

Process

• Percentage of community engagement activity participants who say they have been offered practical support by the police to enable them to participate
• Percentage of community engagement activity participants who say they have been offered relevant training by the police
• Percentage of community engagement activity participants who say they have been involved by the police from the beginning of the process right through to its conclusion.
• Percentage of occasions when deadlines for acting upon consultatively-generated information are met.
• Percentage of pieces of consultatively-generated information which have been presented to police decision-makers, either in raw or rationalised form.
• Percentage of community engagement activity participants who are now involved who say they had not been involved in any such activity previously.
• Percentage of police employees who have received community engagement training.
• Percentage of consultees who feel they were given ample time to respond to the consultation request.
• Percentage of community engagement participants from groups identified as ‘hard-to-reach’.
• Percentage of consultees to whom feedback was provided following the consultation exercise to explain the results of the exercise and how they will be acted upon, or, if they are not to be acted upon, to provide an explanation as to why not.

Effect

• Percentage of consultees who can provide one or more specific examples of an observed change in police service delivery as a result of their consultation.
• Ability of the police service to articulate differing satisfaction levels amongst its client base according to a full range of demographic dimensions.
• Percentage of community members able to name their individual representatives (or their roles?) as regards community safety.
• Percentage of community members who feel they understand the police service planning process and how it is informed by consultation.
• Percentage of community members who think they can influence their police service more than they can influence their health service (or transport provider?)
• Number of community members volunteering to work for the police service in an unpaid capacity, e.g. VIPs or Special Constables.
• Number of community members involved in auxiliary support of the police, e.g. in Neighbourhood Watch or Pub Watch schemes.
• Ability of the police service to provide documentary evidence of consultatively-generated information being considered in the decision-making process and a record of why it was accepted or rejected as advice.
• Number of items of community intelligence generated.
• Percentage increase in uptake by community members of police offers of community engagement compared with the previous year.

Next steps

19. Further reduction of these lists of measures from 10 items each to 5 items each will be undertaken in consultation with stakeholders. A demographically representative panel of 3,000 Londoners (the Safer London Panel), and a subgroup of the CPCG Chairs’ Forum, will be surveyed as to which of the remaining possible measures they consider to be most important. It is essential that stakeholders’ perspectives be sought in this way.

20. A number of meetings with contacts from other relevant organisations (e.g. MPS, Crime Concern, ODPM and LSE) have already taken place regarding this project, its direction and detail. Further such meetings will be held with additional expert and interested parties.

21. Once some consensus has been established on the 5 measures for each of the 3 categories, it will then be necessary, on the basis of some justifiable rationale, to formulate a standard for each measure. This standard will be a benchmark against which the efficacy of a particular community engagement intervention will be judged.

22. With the establishment of a draft set of 15 key measures and corollary standards, the time will come to apply and test the methodology to existing community-police engagement mechanisms. This work will be the subject of a future report to this Committee.

C. Race and equality impact

Equality and diversity are performance criteria for community engagement activity, for which measures are proposed in this report. Application of the proposed measures to existing community-police engagement activity across the Metropolitan Police Service will demonstrate whether present mechanisms are equally effective in seeking, capturing, communicating and advancing the views on policing of all Londoners.

D. Financial implications

There are no financial implications directly arising from this report.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Andy Hull, Community Engagement Unit

For more information contact:

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

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