Update on the planning process 2006/2007

Report: 13
Date: 13 February 2006
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report outlines the progress on the development of the high level objectives, measures and targets that underpin the operational corporate priorities for inclusion in the Annual Policing Plan 2006/2007. The Annual Policing Plan will form part of the one-year delivery mechanism for the three year Corporate Strategy, which was agreed by Management Board and the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) Full Authority in September 2005.

As part of the planning process, it has been agreed that the draft high-level objectives, and developing measures and targets for the operational corporate priorities be presented at the February 2006 MPA Planning, Performance and Review (PPRC) meeting.

A. Recommendation

That Members agree the proposed high-level objectives and developing measures and targets contained within this report.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. The draft Corporate Strategy, agreed by the MPA Full Authority in September 2005, has set the direction, strategies and priorities for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) for the next three years. The priorities are:

• Safety in Neighbourhoods
• Counter Terrorism, Security & Protection
• Criminal Networks
• Capital City Policing
• Information Quality
• Citizen Focus
• Together

2. The 2006/2007 Annual Policing Plan will form part of the one-year delivery mechanism of the three-year Corporate Strategy. Other elements of the delivery mechanism will be included as part of the Met Modernisation Programme (MMP), which is currently under development.

3. The draft Operational Corporate Objectives were reviewed by the MPA Full Authority, and PPRC meetings in December. The objectives have been further refined following these meetings, and together with the developing measures and targets, were debated by MPS Management Board on 31 January 2006, and the MPA planning panel on the 1 February 2006. These are now submitted to seek members’ agreement on the current proposals. An updated report including the draft Annual Policing Plan and revised measures and targets as appropriate, will then be submitted to the MPA Full Authority in February 2006, through MPS Management Board.

Methodology for developing the High Level Objectives and associated measures and targets

4. The draft objectives, measures and targets were examined by MPS Management Board to check for consistency and cohesiveness. At the same time, the MPS corporate planning team is continuing to ensure that the developing measures, targets and activities take into account the results of community consultation, MPA members feedback and the mayoral priorities.

5. The areas agreed by Management Board on the 31 January 2006 as the critical focus for improved delivery are set out within Appendix 1. Additionally, Annex A provides a short context and commentary on why they have been included. The current performance in these areas is also included to provide the context for the proposed improvement targets where available. These were reviewed by the planning panel meeting on 1 February 2006 and have been refined to reflect the feedback received from members.

6. Appendix 2 contains the draft objectives, measures and targets where available in relation to all of the operational corporate priorities. The critical focus areas contained within Appendix 1 are highlighted in red. It is proposed that the remaining Police Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF)/Public Service Agreement (PSA) measures continue to be closely monitored. All of these will have a member of Management Board accountable for delivery, and the performance of the MPS in these areas will be reported to the MPA PPRC meeting for scrutiny by members. This approach will mean that there are fewer targets in the Annual Policing Plan (i.e. those in Appendix 1), thus enabling the MPS to focus activity on the key critical focus areas.

7. Delivery plans for the remaining corporate priorities were submitted to the MPA oversight committee meeting on 3 February 2006 as part of the progress reporting of the Met Modernisation Programme (MMP), and will form part of the content of the Annual Policing Plan.

Variable Target Setting process to set British Crime Survey (BCS) comparator crime reduction target

8. The Territorial Policing (TP) variable target setting process began with Borough Operational Command Unit and partnership engagement in early October 2005, leading to full target setting meetings during the week commencing 12 December 2005. Boroughs were provided with past and current performance data, from sources internally and from iQuanta, the Home Office statistical database in order to inform their target setting discussions. Boroughs were required to set targets for each of the basket of 10 BCS comparator crimes in terms of offences per thousand population (in line with iQuanta methodology), rather than in percentages, and were given greater freedom to choose how they targeted each crime type to match the requirements of their most recent control strategy.

9. During the week commencing 19 December 2005, Link Commanders engaged with their Borough Commanders to ensure that the draft proposals from each borough were challenging, realistic and achievable. Thereafter, TP Command Team met on 9 January 2006 to examine the contributions from all boroughs, and collectively agreed the current TP proposals, which amount to a reduction of about 6.5% (05/06 v 06/07). The final percentage difference could change over the last two months of this year, but it is expected to be in the region of 6 to 7%.

10. The basket of 10 comparator crimes comprises:

• Domestic Burglary
• Theft of a Motor Vehicle
• Theft from a Motor Vehicle
• Vehicle Interference
• Theft of a Pedal Cycle
• Criminal Damage
• Theft from the Person
• Personal Robbery
• Common Assault
• Wounding

Business Groups Objectives

11. A summary of business group level priorities is currently being developed, and these will be presented to the Full Authority meeting in February 2006. These business group priorities relate to significant areas of MPS business that are the lead responsibility of a specialist unit or support directorate. These will be included in the Annual Policing Plan.

Service Improvement Reviews

12. It is proposed that the Service Improvement Review methodology is applied to two of the developmental areas within the MMP. The development areas will be identified in conjunction with MPA members when the MMP programme delivery for 2006/2007 is agreed.

C. Race and equality impact

There are no issues directly impacting on race and equality in this paper, however, as part of the development of the delivery plans for the high-level corporate priorities, equality impact assessments are being undertaken in consultation with the Diversity Directorate.

D. Financial implications

There are no specific financial implications arising from this report, although the development of the operational corporate priorities will determine in broad terms how the MPS proposes to use resources in 2006/2007.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Ross Daniels, Met Modernisation Programme

For more information contact:

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

List of abbreviations

PPRC

Planning, Performance and Review

MPS

Metropolitan Police Service

MPA

Metropolitan Police Authority

MMP

Met Modernisation Programme

PPAF

Police Performance Assessment Framework

TP

Territorial Policing

PSA

Public Service Agreement

Annex A: Critical Performance Areas overview

The Critical Performance Area chart attached at Appendix 1 demonstrates how the 13 proposed critical performance areas are linked to the agreed Corporate Strategy. This supporting paper further explains the chart and the reasons for inclusion of the 13 measures.

The Critical Performance Chart

The left-hand column of the chart shows the Strategic Priorities. These are taken from the Corporate Strategy and highlight where the significant areas of focus and change are for the MPS.

The second column from the left denotes the Strategic Outcomes that the MPS is seeking to deliver as a result of the Corporate Strategy. These state where the MPS wants to position itself as a result of the Corporate Strategy.

The third column titled Outputs states a number of contributors to the overall strategic outcomes. These are labelled as priority objectives within the matrix at Appendix 2.

The fourth column Critical Performance Areas lists the 13 measures that will provide the performance focus for the year 2006/2007. Of these:

• Ten relate to SPIs that form PPAF.
• Two measures are to be developed in conjunction with the MPA.
• One relates to PSA3 – the number of offences bought to justice.

The fifth column presents the provisional targets for 2006/07. These come from a number of sources such as the TP variable target setting process and analysis undertaken by the Performance Directorate.

Finally, the right-hand column shows the current performance for 2005/06 where monitored.

General

The targets have been based on improving the MPS’s PPAF scores - the Home Offices annual assessment of police forces based on national performance indicators (SPIs) and HMIC’s qualitative baseline assessments. There are four grades for performance excellent, good, fair and poor for each SPI and baseline. It is important to note that the MPS does not know what the performance grade boundaries will be for 2006/07 and in proposing targets the MPS has estimated what they would be based on the 2005/06 performance of the other forces in the most similar force (MSF) family we are compared with.

Overall Satisfaction

Overall satisfaction – SPI 1e looks at the overall satisfaction of victims of domestic burglaries, vehicle crime, robbery & traffic accidents with the police service regarding their incident. SPIs 1a-1d deal with respectively - making contact, action taken, being kept informed of progress in their case and treatment by staff respectively and are reported to PPRC as are all SPIs. The action taken by the police appears to be the main driver behind overall satisfaction – satisfaction with actions in turn is driven by – explaining what is going to happen & why, officers/PCSOs knowing what they are doing and giving practical help.

As there is a need to minimize the number of targets SPI 1e seemed the most appropriate.

The target of 81% is estimated to be what is required to achieve ‘Good’.

Victims of racist crime

This is the same as overall satisfaction except it is a survey of victims of racist incidents and is SPI 3a

BCS comparator basket

The government has set targets for all forces to reduce the recorded crime that mirrors the types of crime picked up in the British Crime Survey, which in the MPS’s case is 19.4%. Thus, the MPS has to reduce the basket by 19.4% starting from 2003/04 by 2007/08. At the moment BCS crime has been reduced by about 5.5% since 2003/04 and the 6.5% target reflects the contribution of 2006/07 to the 19.4% and was set by TP’s variable target setting process.

Violent Crime

This is also an SPI 5b which covers violence against the person, sex crimes and robbery. The target is for 5% reduction in the portion (70%) of this crime covered by the BCS basket – see above. There will be two subsidiary measures that will be monitored but will not have targets – violence with injury to focus on the violence where people are hurt and robbery because of its seriousness.

Reduce crime in challenging wards

Challenging wards are those that suffer from higher levels of violent and serious crime and may require significant co-operation from other parts of the MPS. This area is in its infancy and still under development.

Arrest rate for domestic violence incidents where there is a power of arrest

This SPI (8a) is intended to be a prevention measure to show abusers that the police are taking domestic violence seriously. It has been an indicator for a number of years and there was research in the US (Hoyle, C & Sanders, A 2000) suggesting that arrest deterred offenders.

Gun Crime

SPI 5e deals with more serious violence. Gun crime is crime enabled by a gun and life threatening covers the offences of homicide, attempted murder and wounding or other act endangering life. The target of 5% refers to 11 specified boroughs and only to gun crime and derived from TP’s variable target setting process for those boroughs.

Specialist Crime Directorate debated a gun crime reduction target for the whole of the MPS in the week commencing the 6 February.

The number of criminal networks disrupted

This measure deals with the disruption of criminal networks. A criminal network is defined as ‘a network of individuals involved in ongoing criminal activity for some form of criminal gain’ (usually profit or gain but can be for social standing). A disruption will have been achieved when a criminal network is unable to operate at its normal level of activities.

% of police officer time spent on front line duties

This SPI is calculated on the basis of a mixture of activity sampling and counting officers in particular posts. The target for the MPS will also take PCSOs into account. It is important to note that significant improvement in this SPI will require substantial civilianisation to replace officers currently in roles not classified as ‘front line’.

The MPS also report the ‘Operational Policing Measure’ (OPM). This measures the visibility of both MPS officers and police staff and hence includes Scene of Crime Officers and PCSOs. As the OPM better reflects the intentions of the MPA and the MPS in making staff visible to Londoners a target may be set around this as opposed to the SPI regarding police officer time on front line duties.

Using BCS perceptions of anti-social behaviour

This SPI covers much of the work of Safer Neighbourhood teams. Those teams work with communities and local partners to tackle disorder and other forms of anti social behaviour, reduce crime and provide reassurance to their localities'.

It is calculated by asking respondents to select one of four grades (very big problem =3; fairly big problem = 2; not a very big problem = 1 and not a problem at all =0) to show how worried they are about the following:

• noisy neighbours
• teenagers hanging around
• rubbish & litter
• vandalism
• people using/dealing drugs
• people being drunk/rowdy
• abandoned cars

For each respondent the grades are totalled and the percentage of respondents who scored 11 or more is considered to be worried about the level of anti-social behaviour. So the end result is 30% feel there is a high level of anti-social behaviour rather than scores for each of the seven items. Some of the items are not direct police work but could be covered by working with local partners.

The biggest driver for this is being a victim of crime followed by cohesiveness of community – trusting ones’ neighbours, deprivation, and contact with media.

Community Confidence Measures For Counter Terrorism

It has been suggested that the MPS develop community confidence measures for counter-terrorism. Development work is ongoing and it is thought that the 1st year will primarily establish a baseline for the MPA. The measure would include questions relating to safety, satisfaction and engagement with respect to Counter-terrorist issues.

Sanction detection rate & Offenders Brought To Justice

This SPI is the major statistic that shows how successful the police are in solving crime. It also is the main driver behind attaining the OBTJ target set for London by the Government for 2006/07.

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