Operational policing measure

Report: 07
Date: 29 May 2002
By: Commissioner

Summary

An Operational Policing Measure matrix has been produced to accurately reflect the number of police and civil staff who: provide a uniformed visible presence; are operational or provide operational support; or organisational support. Each staff role in the MPS has been categorised. If police pay is devolved, experience suggests that OCU commanders may reduce their overall police numbers. The difference in police and civil staff salary costs will allow additional civil staff to be engaged in support roles previously held by police officers. This will then allow those officers released from support roles to be posted to visible operational policing. Whilst overall police numbers may fall, the hours spent by officers engaged in overt operational policing will rise, increasing public reassurance. The Operational Policing Measure will monitor the hours spent in each role.

A. Recommendations

1. Members are asked to consider and endorse this proposed operational policing measure and its subsequent deployment.

B. Supporting information

1. The MPS are required to publish, in the annual Policing Plan in-year estimates and final figures, of the proportion of police officers in each of the HMIC definitions. There was a qualification to the 2001/02 Policing Plan that the MPS could not provide this information.

2. This information is required to support the devolution project. The chosen pathfinder sites are producing plans to change their pay profile, which may see a reduction in police staff and an increase in civil staff. These plans are required by Management Board to explain how a change to the pay profiles will impact operational policing capacity. This 'Operational Policing Measure' will be used to monitor progress made by the boroughs in increasing visible operational deployments and the impact on civil staff recruitment.

3. Lewisham OCU is producing a business case, to be presented to MPS Management Board. This will underpin a change to their pay profile, which may see a reduction in police staff and an increase in civil staff. Subject to ratification with the MPA Treasurer, other boroughs will be able to keep and use any budget savings created by vacancies. Boroughs are not permitted to deliberately generate such vacancies.

Corporate data standardisation

4. A matrix has been developed which categorises every police and civil staff role in the MPS. The matrix categories will ensure standardisation when any party discusses and/or uses corporate data. These codes (Appendix 1) will be used to sum the number of each role on each borough and consequently this will identify how many members of staff appear in each category of the matrix. (Appendix 2,  see Supporting material). The matrix is populated using the HMIC codes, supplemented by bespoke MPS codes.

5. These codes can facilitate a detailed activity based enquiry across boroughs and eventually it will relate to the MPS as a whole.

6. This matrix will enable the following:

• The enquiry to be broken down into the number of hours dedicated to each of these matrix categories, i.e. operational police hours. This will be done by adding together the hours that staff should have worked, minus all abstractions such as sickness, course attendance, aid, annual leave and time at court, and finally adding any overtime hours.
• Corporate data will be extractable whenever required. It will be regularly maintained by the Computer Aided Resource Management (CARM) team. CARM is the system used to monitor the deployment of all MPS staff. This level of information will benefit senior members by enabling them, for example, to identify where the MPS strengths lie, how many officers are filling civilian posts and whether over time these trends have changed.

Duty management key and borough activity analysis

7. The CARM team will also be introducing a duty management key system. This will require each member of staff to book on and off for each shift. This will identify the potential number of officers/staff and hours dedicated to a particular role or matrix category (minus abstractions). It will also be able to guarantee that the individual actually attended for that role, rather than being abstracted for a different activity, such as escorting a prisoner or completing paperwork.

8. Territorial Policing (TP) are also developing from this Matrix process a further level of detail for strength and deployment data. A team are currently looking at reporting hours dedicated to investigating crime compared with proactively working on specific crime types etc. Their enquiries will be able to use these new MPS codes to create their own categories, which will then count the number of staff and hours dedicated to these specific roles. This corporate data will again be available immediately on request, once this process has been established on each borough.

Measurement

9. Data may be used as a performance indicator for visible operational policing if it is included in the MPS Monthly Management Report. Measurement would be likely to focus on:-

• The percentage of visible operational police officers compared to like Pathfinder boroughs, and;
• The percentage of visible operational police officers on a borough measured on a month on month basis.

Conclusion

10. At present the MPS are able to report how many members of staff work for each business group, whether they are civil or police and in which area they work in accordance with the Matrix: Operational, Operational Support and Organisational Support. (Appendix 1)

11. The six pilot boroughs, Bromley, Lewisham, Barnet, Sutton, Camden and Hackney will be able to provide on a monthly basis a detailed breakdown of how many hours and staff are dedicated to operational, operational support and organisational support roles. It will also account for obvious abstractions and overtime, but will not be able to consider time away completing paperwork or other daily last minute abstractions.

12. A number of proxy's will be developed in the next few months that will be used to account for the daily pressures and abstractions that take officers and other staff away from for example, their operational duties.

14. Plans have been developed for the next 18months to extend the detail of activity based analysis, by developing a matrix, which will be established on each borough and business group to provide level 1 corporate data. The new management key will provide greater accuracy and as CARM and the self-maintenance system becomes more sophisticated the greater and the more extensive the strength and deployment data will become. The time scales are shown at Appendix 3 (see Supporting material).

15. Strength and deployment data can be provided by a business group that is live on CARM. On a micro level it will provide details of what each officer is doing every 15minutes. However, this degree of activity analysis requires that an officer spends up to an hour each week away from operational or non-operational duties updating their personal CARM file. The development of these new codes will assist in providing a level of corporate data that will inform management and other interested parties.

C. Financial implications

There are no specific implications in relation to this paper

D. Background papers

None.

E. Contact details

Report author: Karen Turner, Corporate Performance Analysis Unit and Chief Superintendent Ian Thomas, MPS.

For information contact:

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

Appendices

• Appendix 1 – Matrix Categories.
• Appendix 2 – Operational Policing Measure Matrix (see Supporting material)
• Appendix 3 – Operational Policing Measure Timescale (see Supporting material)
• Appendix 4 – Staff Categories (see Supporting material)

Appendix 1: Matrix categories

1. 'Visible Operational Uniformed Police Presence'

Any officer working in uniform, visible to the public whose primary role (i.e. over 50%) is the direct delivery of the overarching aims of the MPS. All roles under the HMIC code 88 will be included in this category.

2. 'Civilian Uniformed Staff and Auxiliaries'

Any non-police officer working for the MPS, visible to the public wearing a uniform. This will include Traffic Wardens, Wardens, Special Constables and Civilian Front Counter staff etc.

3. 'Non-visible Operational Police Officers'

Any officer who primarily wears plain clothes, who works either in direct contact with the public i.e. detectives investigating crimes or those deployed covertly on crime detection/reduction operations.

4. 'Operational Civil Staff'

Any non-police officer whose primary role involves direct contact with the public or is in continual communication with them and they are in the front line delivery of the overarching aims of the MPS. This will include coroners' officers, bomb explosive experts etc

5 & 6. 'Operational Police and Civil Staff Support'

These two categories will display officers and civilian members of staff, uniformed or otherwise offering direct support to Operations. This will include intelligence staff, researchers and forensic support etc

7 & 8. 'Organisational Support by Police and Civil Staff'

Both categorises will include those members of staff either police or civilian that support the internal needs of the organisation. This will include performance monitoring, training, personnel and finance functions, secretaries, typists and senior members of management including ACPO officers that service the needs of the MPS.

The enquiry will breakdown the number of hours potentially dedicated to each of these matrix categories, i.e. operational police hours. This will be done by adding together the hours that staff should have worked, minus all abstractions such as sickness, course attendance, aid, annual leave and time at court, and finally adding any overtime hours.

Send an e-mail linking to this page

Feedback