CDRP borough performance

Report: 6
Date: 4 November 2004
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report is to inform the MPA of the impact of Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) on borough performance, to examine how the MPS manages that performance, to highlight best practice and to emphasise where synergy has been developed. The Corporate Performance Analysis Group will submit a separate complementary report on ‘iQuanta August 2004 Borough Performance’.

A. Recommendations

That

1. the report be noted and the progress made to date endorsed;
2. the separate, but overlapping responsibilities of the MPS, Government Office for London (GOL) and the Home Office in relation to performance monitoring within CDRPs members be noted; and
3. that the MPS report on progress in 6 months time.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. In January 2003, the MPA published a report detailing the findings together with 35 recommendations from the Scrutiny on the contribution the MPS makes to Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) and the effectiveness of this contribution across London. The recommendations made related both to the work of the MPS and also to that of the MPA.

2. This matter was last reported to the MPA on 12 July 2004. It should be noted that the nature of many of the recommendations means that their implementation is an ongoing process. It is possible to categorise the recommendations in groups as follows:

1. recommendations dealing with borough-based staff engaged in CDRP work – appropriate ranks, retention, training and career development;
2. those dealing with support for partnership officers at a corporate level, including monitoring and reporting functions;
3. training to be delivered to all recruits and that which is to be made available to officers according to the role being performed; and, finally,
4. those recommendations associated with the identification of good practice.

3. Progress has been made in each of the areas identified above, notably in respect of training, corporate support and problem solving. Significant successes include the introduction of a week-long course for probationary officers on the subject of partnership working. This course incorporates the Home Office certificated, ‘Introduction to Crime & Disorder Reduction’ module. In addition, a course has been developed for officers assigned to the Safer Neighbourhood Teams, a significant part of which relates to partnership working. This course is being assessed by other police forces seeking to introduce it for their own teams.

4. Most boroughs have a CDRP Strategy Group with the MPS being represented by the borough Commander. This strategy group will invariably have strategic borough links to the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), Drug Action Team (DAT) and Youth Offending Team (YOT).

5. CDRPs have a statutory responsibility to carry out a comprehensive audit on crime and disorder issues every three years and to develop a partnership strategy based on the findings. CDRPs are currently in the process of undertaking their audits.

MPA now a ‘responsible authority’

6. The duty to carry out these audits and develop strategies to tackle crime and disorder (including anti-social behaviour) and the misuse of drugs used to rest solely with police, local authorities and probation service.

7. Since April 2004 the MPA and Fire Authority and Primary Care Trusts have also become designated ‘responsible authorities’ under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 as amended by the Police Reform Act 2002. This means that they now are now involved in borough CDRPs. Early indications are that this has been a positive step as this has provided further support for the MPS at a strategic level within local partnerships.

Impact on performance

8. It is widely recognised that CDRPs can play a part in reducing the opportunity and risk factors relating to criminality. Whilst it is difficult to provide any detailed analysis of the contribution made by Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) in reducing crime, there is no doubt they do make a significant contribution. However proving this is a challenge, not only to the MPS but also to the other agencies involved in crime reduction across London.

9. The Audit Commission (Community Safety Partnerships Briefing, 2002) recognised that as there are many organisations involved, each with their own remit and methods, no rounded performance picture exists. In addition, as performance is not always assessed against outputs, even though crime has fallen in the last few years, it is difficult to assess the direct contribution that CDRPs have made. The introduction of Safer Neighbourhood Teams across London has started to address this issue; with performance indicators closely linked to local action plans, which are in turn linked to local priorities.

10. Currently, the CDRPs report annually to the Home Office on their performance. These reports are dealt with solely by the Home Office and Government Office and do not form part of the remit of the MPS.

Performance management

11. Traditionally, the MPS’s strength has been in short term approaches, whilst the CDRPs offer medium to long-term solutions to problems. The MPS has shown itself capable of reacting swiftly to immediate crime and disorder concerns with the ability to mobilise resources at short notice. However, it is recognised that to effectively tackle issues a combined approach should be considered at the earliest possible stage. The London Crime and Disorder Audit (Government Office for London, July 2004) states, “Consolidation strategies can marry the short term impact of enforcement operations with efforts to put in place measures to achieve sustainable reductions.” An example of where this is starting to happen is with Safer Neighbourhood Teams. Local community audits are informing and driving partnership activity between the neighbourhood teams and local authority personnel (i.e. wardens, anti-graffiti teams, noise pollution units, abandoned vehicle units) to assist in tackling local crime and disorder issues. Multi-agency problem-solving approaches are starting to provide long-term sustainable solutions to problems.

12. However, identifying project outcomes is problematic and is further complicated by the presence of other crime reduction and regeneration activities in the project area. For example, these can simply mask genuine success or genuine failure; on the other hand, they could actually complement and thus enhance a project’s impact.

13. An example of where performance monitoring is starting to work is with the BCU and Building Safer Communities (BSC) funding streams. The financial spends are monitored and costs are balanced against outcomes. CDRPs are held accountable for the way the money is spent.

Best practice

14. The contribution made by partners and CDRPs against Street Crime is worthy of mention. Whilst the MPS were making some inroads into reducing street crime, it is unlikely that the outstanding results would have been made without the significant resources of CDRPs across the MPS. However, the same difficulty is incurred in that it is problematical to accurately identify the extent of this contribution.

15. Whilst the remit of the MPS was based primarily around enforcement, this was complemented by the contribution made by our partners across various agencies. HMIC led the joint inspection of the Street Crime Initiative and recognised that whilst most of the media headlines and ministerial focus concentrated on crime reduction, detection and enforcement, much work was going in areas such as:

• Prevention and diversion – in particular diverting young people,
• Target hardening – making the offending more difficult or risky,
• Deprivation and cultural issues – identifying vulnerability and trends,
• Rehabilitation and resettlement – trying to avoid a ‘revolving door’ effect.

16. The London Street Crime Management Board, which led the London response to the Street Crime Initiative, has now evolved into the London Crime Reduction Delivery Board (LCRDB) with a wider remit. Part of this remit is to identify and spread good practice across boroughs and agencies.

17. An Alcohol Misuse Enforcement Campaign that took place over the summer of 2004 (Operation Optic) with Commander Chris Allison having the MPS and National lead. Many CDRPs were involved in this joint initiative to tackle alcohol misuse and associated alcohol fuelled violence. The Police Standards Unit is now proposing to extend this initiative to cover violence in general, although this has not yet been agreed by ACPO. It is hoped that CDRPs will be playing a more integrated role in this forthcoming initiative, although it is likely that many CDRPs will only be able to include this additional work when their strategies are launched in April 2005.

Synergy

18. The introduction of CDRPs has created a forum for the furtherance of partnership activity covering a broad range of community safety issues. In the early years it was necessary for participating agencies to overcome the initial fears that this amounted to an attempt to give them community safety or crime reduction responsibilities that did not fall within their core functions. Considerable progress has been made in recent years in integrating community safety issues into the mainstream activities of local authorities.

19. Partnerships have been successful in dealing with this false perception of the role of the CDRP, in so far as they have achieved synergies between agencies. Perhaps an example of this is provided by the Safer Schools Partnerships (SSPs), which have seen police officers posted to specific schools, forging good working partnerships with school staff and pupils. A full evaluation of the impact of SSPs has been undertaken by KPMG and will be subject to a separate briefing to MPA members.

20. The CDRPs are currently completing their crime audits that will form the basis for their new 3 year Crime Reduction Strategies (these will be launched in April 2005). The audits, which will be published later this year, should give a much stronger indication of the contribution and successes of the local partnerships.

21. One of the key issues for the new strategies is how to tackle prolific offenders. The Priority and Prolific Offenders (PPO) Strategy affords the MPS an ideal opportunity to work with the resources of the CDRPs on a relatively small number of individuals. This may have a dramatic impact on crime levels across London, which will not only be reflected in the performance of the MPS but also in the performance and confidence in CDRPs to achieve results. There are three strands to the initiative: -

• Prevent and Deter
• Catch and Convict
• Rehabilitate and Resettle

22. The focus is around CDRP involvement to reflect local priorities. For boroughs, this means that through their CDRPs, Borough Commanders will have 15-20 PPOs identified through NIM. These will then be the subject of intense multi-agency activity to stop their offending whilst at large or already serving sentences, or police will catch and convict them. CDRPs are now being encouraged to take more of a lead on PPOs and where possible to fund a PPO co-ordinators post. The top ten high crime boroughs are also set to increase their overall number of PPOs.

Public Service Agreements (PSAs)

23. In addition to the example cited above, a further demonstration of synergy within partnerships may be provided by the Local Public Service Agreements (LPSAs). At this time, there are at least 23 boroughs with LPSAs running. Of these 11 will reach completion in March 2005. The reason that this initiative has been included in this report is the potential that these agreements have for giving practical expression to the notion that effective partnership working requires participating agencies to undertake their own core functions in a manner which supports a shared aim. In this way there are agreements that, in addition to mandatory targets, seek to address youth crime, attitudes towards young people and reducing road accidents that result in death and serious injury.

24. Of course, the extent of success achieved through these efforts will not be fully known until the agreements are completed. However, there is anecdotal evidence that the very task of discussing the targets and undertaking the work brings partners together in a meaningful forum.

C. Race and equality impact

1. It is not envisaged that the progress made by CDRPs is having a disproportionate or detrimental impact on a particular section of the community. Indeed, most CDRP Crime and Disorder Audits and resultant Strategies are specifically aimed at providing enhanced service provision for generic community groups, such as young people or vulnerable older people.

2. Many CDRP strategies now have specific targets aimed at groups that have historically been hard to engage with, such as the homeless, refugees, asylum seekers and travelling people.

3. A formal impact assessment on the promotion of race equality arising from the work of CDRPs has not been carried out at this stage.

D. Financial implications

1. The MPS has developed an improved system for reporting progress on projects using the Basic Command Unit (BCU) Fund. Safer Neighbourhoods and Financial Services since the start of this financial year have adopted a system which provides more information about not only the progress made in spending the money but the results the project has achieved. This system will allow the MPS centrally to consistently collect ‘best practice’ and make sure it is shared with other boroughs.

2. The MPA £50k fund also report back using the same methodology and it is hoped that any changes made to partnership funding streams (Safer Stronger Communities Fund starting April 2005) could use a similar format. This will make the identification of best practice across a range of funds and activities easier.

3. It should be noted that funding provides a significant driver for partnership working. The availability of funding, which would include the MPA Partnership Fund, has given rise to a range of activities between partners within CDRPs. It is anticipated that examples of best practice will emerge from the many projects supported by this and other funding streams.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Craig Mitchell

For more information contact:

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

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