Joint MPA/MPS community engagement update

Report: 8
Date: 5 July 2007
By: Assistant Commissioner Operational Services on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

The report outlines the progress made in developing a new MPS Community Engagement Infrastructure and includes examples of the range of current and proposed engagement activities and information relating to the development of effective performance management and governance frameworks.

A. Recommendations

That Members note this report.

B. Supporting information

The MPA/MPS Community Engagement Strategy 2006-2009

1. The MPA/MPS Community Engagement Strategy 2006-2009 was introduced in September 2006 and sets out the purpose and role of both organisations in relation to effective community engagement. Whilst the two organisations share the same aim of developing ‘safer communities’, their roles differ. Whilst the MPA seeks to monitor, scrutinise and ensure that the MPS discharge their responsibility concerning community engagement and, in addition, promote and enhance citizenship and community confidence, the MPS seeks to professionalise the way it engages London’s diverse communities with a view to improving peoples’ experience of policing and, with their collaboration, deliver a safer London.

2. It is intended that the MPA and MPS will review the strategy together in September 2007 to ensure that it remains relevant and fit for purpose.

The MPS Citizen Focus Policing Programme

3. The MPA/MPS Community Engagement Strategy 2006-2009 was a product of MPS Citizen Focus Policing Programme as part of the ‘Improving Engagement’ work strand. In addition to developing the strategy, the programme also developed a range of community engagement tools (including the manual ‘Planning and Managing Community Engagement and Consultation’) that will undoubtedly help officers engage communities to understand local priorities and concerns. The tools are easily available to all officers through the MPS Diversity and Citizen Focus website and will continue to add value to the MPS approach with the introduction and development of the new MPS Community Engagement Infrastructure.

MPS community engagement infrastructure

4. Responding to the MPA/MPS Community Engagement Strategy, the MPS employed an experienced external project manager who, supported by advice from the MPA and other significant stakeholders, put together a programme initiation proposal to develop an MPS Community Engagement Infrastructure that was signed off in April 2007 and is scheduled to deliver the majority of its benefits by March 2008.

5. The infrastructure will deliver a wide range of new products and approaches through a whole series of activities grouped into the following seven work streams:

• Understanding communities
• Building on existing relationships
• Communication
• Training and capability
• Joining up community engagement activity across the organisation(s)
• Embedding community engagement into all MPS programmes and approaches
• Performance Management Framework

6. Whilst the programme is being co-ordinated by Detective Superintendent Alaric Bonthron within the Diversity and Citizen Focus Directorate (DCFD), each work stream has a senior DCFD lead accountable to a three monthly review process chaired by DAC Alf Hitchcock. MPA Officer Jane Owen has been invited to attend the review meeting.

7. It is proposed that progress against the delivery plan will continue to be reported back to, and overseen by, PPRC.

8. Whilst work on developing new products and approaches has already begun, work stream leads are at different stages of finalising their delivery plans that should be complete and signed off by July 2007.

9. The people cost of developing and delivering the component parts of the new Community Engagement Framework is provided largely from the £1.6 million MPS Home Office Funding for counter terrorism community engagement. The Funding has allowed the MPS to build on the excellent engagement work immediately following July 2005 by consolidating and developing the work of the Communities Together Strategic Engagement Team (CTSET) that, linking into the new infrastructure, has included the ongoing development of an effective pan-London community engagement platform.

10. In addition to continuing to develop the community engagement tools already available through the DCFD website, work stream leads will work with Safer Neighbourhoods and other MPS teams to improve and build upon existing capacity and systems collecting and disseminating community engagement learning and good practice.

11. The MPS community engagement development work will include looking to other UK and EU Police Forces for good practice.

Safer Neighbourhoods

12. Every day officers on response teams and officers and PCSOs on London’s 635 Safer Neighbourhood Teams are each engaged in hundreds of interactions with the community for a very wide variety of reasons. Whilst many engagements are informal and brief, none are inconsequential as they all provide an opportunity to listen, understand and leave the citizen with a feeling of security, value and knowledge concerning local policing.

13. Undoubtedly, the significant improvements experienced last year in community satisfaction was associated with the successful introduction of Safer Neighbourhood teams onto all London ward areas.

14. The Safer Neighbourhood Programme measures performance against a range of indicators on a system termed ‘EPIC’. Currently, the measures are mostly quantitive and assess performance areas such as the number of pre-planned meetings, ward panel meetings, people who attend meetings, roll-call/street briefings, ASBOs issued and arrests. Whilst EPIC will continue to evolve and provide better quality of performance information, it does not currently provide qualitative information concerning community engagement.

15. A significant indication of the success of Safer Neighbourhoods comes from Public Attitude and Safer Neighbourhood Survey data concerning, among other measures, ‘confidence in local policing’, ‘local police understanding community issues’ and ‘local police are dealing with community issues’. Whilst assumptions can be made connecting the quality of community engagement with the survey results, the indicators do not specifically measure the quality of community engagement.

Communities Together Strategic Engagement Team (CT SET)

16. CT SET, as mentioned above at paragraph 8, is the MPS team brought together immediately following July 2005 to engage and work with London’s diverse communities. Whilst their key role is to make communities safer from the threat of terrorism, their development has also undoubtedly provided the MPS with an excellent pan-London capacity to support boroughs with cross border community issues.

17. CT SET work closely with Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) providing advice and operational support before, during and following executive action and also work with the Serious Crime Directorate (SCD) concerning supporting communities vulnerable to the illegal and community damaging activity of criminal networks.

18. CT SET is about to recruit a small team of five community outreach workers to access and work with the Bangladeshi, Turkish Kurdish, Pakistani, Somali and Sri Lankan Tamil communities (the communities mirror those involved in the University of Central Lancashire [UCLAN] project mentioned at paragraph 29). The workers, in liaison with local Safer Neighbourhood Teams, will help the MPS build higher levels of trust, understanding and satisfaction within some of London’s most vulnerable communities whilst, at the same time, seeking to attract recruits, encourage the flow of two-way information and provide police with direct access to young Londoners.

Integrating and optimising MPS community engagement activity

19. The new infrastructure will develop systems to bring together the diverse range of community engagement activity happening every day across London. The notion that community engagement is ‘a Territorial Policing Safer Neighbourhood thing’ is far from the mark. Effective community engagement is practiced across the organisation and is vital if the MPS and MPA are to understand and respond successfully to the policing needs of Londoners. Whilst community engagement is undoubtedly important to build trust, confidence and understanding leading to increased intelligence, information and safer communities, it is equally important to inform our strategies, policies and approaches leading to raised satisfaction and a narrowing of the BME/non-BME victim satisfaction gap.

20. The delivery plan will also introduce an MPS community contact database that will begin to share the wealth and diversity of community advice throughout the organisation. The database will aim to stop the unconscious overuse of certain advisors whilst providing an opportunity to provide over 15,000 Londoners (the number includes members of Safer Neighbourhood Community Panels) with regular, consistent messages concerning both the challenges and successes of policing the capital.

Performance Management Framework

21. Work is ongoing to develop a performance management framework that will enable the MPS and MPA to monitor the effectiveness of MPS community engagement activity. This will include indicators to evaluate how information is used to improve service delivery and increase community trust, confidence and satisfaction.

22. The first phase of the work is focused on understanding and utilising more effectively the information that the MPS already collects or accesses e.g. through existing and proposed survey work or the current Safer Neighbourhoods performance management system.

23. Further work will then be undertaken to identify where there are gaps in the information being collected to monitor community engagement activity e.g. monitoring the standards of community engagement. Mechanisms and methodologies will then be proposed and developed to address the gaps.

It is proposed to involve officers and staff from both the MPS and MPA in developing and introducing an effective performance management framework for MPS community engagement.

Survey work and research

24. Whilst there is no current survey work specifically addressing ‘quality of community engagement’, the quarterly Pubic Attitude Survey (PAS) explores several related areas of performance such as how people want to be contacted by police. The absence of community engagement specific questions will be reviewed by the work stream lead developing the community engagement performance management framework.

25. There are a number of ongoing and proposed research projects relating to community engagement. In addition to Betsy Stanko’s work with the London School of Economics concerning the concept of community and its relationship with Safer Neighbourhood boundaries, there is also research about to conclude by Professor Ted Cantle of the Institute of Community Cohesion resulting in the introduction of a new integrated approach to monitoring community tensions involving statutory and third sector partners.

26. It is clear from bringing items together for this report that information concerning community engagement, including survey and research work, is retained in different parts of the organisation and is therefore difficult to search and secure. The community engagement infrastructure will bring this information together resulting in a better sharing of learning and good practice. It will also reduce the cost from, and opportunity for, duplicated and unnecessary research.

Examples of current community engagement activity

27. Whilst the MPS will in future be in a position to provide details of the types and value of community engagement activity happening across London, it is not practicable to provide a definitive list of current known activity within this report.

28. Through CT SET the MPS now has the capacity to engage in meaningful pan London community engagement. An example of the type of new work with which the MPS is now involved involves a five community project in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets (Bangladeshi), Redbridge (Pakistani), Newham (Sri Lankan Tamil), Ealing (Somalian) and Haringey (Turkish Kurdish) co-ordinated through the UCLAN.

29. The MPS has invested funding into a single group within each community. UCLAN, in partnership with the MPS, then provided training and skills to a small group within each project who were then mobilised within their communities to develop effective relationships with Safer Neighbourhood Teams, bring together groups to help the MPS better understand local policing needs and, among other aims, seek to support the MPS recruit police officers and PCSOs from their communities. The project (part of SCD’s Operation Quadrant) is due to complete in November 2007. Whilst rolling this approach out to all London communities would be financially unsustainable, there will undoubtedly be parts of the methodology that the MPS may wish to consider employing to help better understand and work with communities.

30. A further example of new ‘community specific’ work involves the Somali community. Whist the example focuses upon the Somali community, there are similar groups of projects ongoing with several other pan London communities’. The following is an indication of the type of work ongoing with Somali groups:

• Somali Community Centre, Camden - with a view to building sustainable relationships of trust and understanding between police and the local Somali community, CT SET has provided a small financial contribution to allow the centre to establish and manage two websites. The websites are specifically aimed at accessing young Somalis who do not necessarily attend community centres and are therefore difficult to access and engage. The site will include details of accessing police services and other ‘Communities Together’ messages. The improved relationship will allow CT SET and local Safer Neighbourhood Teams to discuss community safety issues with local Somalis and help provide support systems and advice to youth workers or parents concerned that local young people may become attracted or vulnerable to violent extremism.
• Somali Community Centre, Greenwich - with a view to securing the confidence of a well attended Somali youth project, CT SET have provided a small financial contribution to assist purchase DJ equipment to encourage young Somalis currently at risk of being attracted to local ‘gang culture’ into the centre. CT SET staff and Safer Neighbourhood Teams attend the centre and provide inputs on community safety and, where necessary, advice to youth workers or parents concerned that local young people may become attracted or vulnerable to violent extremism.
• Somali Eye Media Organisation, Bethnal Green – ‘Somali Eye’ produce a high quality free magazine and a popular radio station serving London’s Somali community. It provides excellent access to the Somali community and regular, unfiltered opportunities for the MPS to provide information to Londoners. With a view to taking advantage of the opportunity, CT SET (supported by DPA) has engaged with Somali Eye Media Organisation and, supported by a degree of financial support, have developed a very positive relationship with the chief executive. This, supported by existing relationships with some MPS OCUs, has resulted in considerable MPS Safer Neighbourhood coverage and will in the future provide regular opportunity for MPS officers to be interviewed around a wide variety of community safety issues and respond to live phone-in programmes.

C. Race and equality impact

The equality impact of introducing new products, practices and systems as a result of the MPA/MPS Community Engagement Strategy and Community Engagement Framework delivery plan is regularly reviewed and will continue to be a rolling process throughout the lifetime of the project.

D. Financial implications

The funding to deliver the new products, systems and practices outlined in this report are in the main ‘people costs’ and are provided from the DCFD year on year budget and from Home Office counter terrorism funding.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Chief Superintendent Ed Bateman, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

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