Bureaucracy Task Force update

Report: 13
Date: 14 September 2006
By: Commissioner

Summary

Below is a progress report on the work of the MPS Anti-Bureaucracy Unit (ABU).

A. Recommendation

That the MPA note the progress made within the MPS on reducing the burden of bureaucracy over the last seven months.

B. Supporting information

1. This is an exception report. Listed below are the major changes that have occurred since the last update in February 2006.

National issues

Policing Bureaucracy Implementation Steering Group (PBISG)

2. Following the transfer of one of the two co chairs, Stephen Rimmer to the MPS, and the retirement of the other co chair, Sir John Giffard, Ch Constable Staffordshire Constabulary, the Home Office temporarily suspended the Group. A new or similar group (possibly as part of the National Policing Improvement Agency) is scheduled to begin sometime in September 2006.

Policing Bureaucracy Gateway

3. The Policing Bureaucracy Gateway has not met for some considerable time. Through the Strategy Unit, (previously Policy Clearing House) the MPS now has an environmental scanning process by which high level new and emerging issues (e.g. proposed legislative changes) are risk assessed for information/action at ACPO level.

National Bureaucracy Advisor (NBA)

4. The Home Office appoints an Acting ACC for six months to help investigate and tackle the burden of unnecessary bureaucracy and paperwork on front line officers. A/ACC Jacqui Cheer visited the MPS during January 2006. The ABU distilled her visit into a list of twelve key initiatives and comments. All have been actioned and fed back to A/ACC Cheer and the original respondents. She reported MPS progress as ‘encouraging’. She has now moved on. The latest advisor has yet to be appointed.

MPS issues – notable savings initiatives

Signing on bail

5. For some considerable time now, the ABU has been working to significantly reduce the burden of ‘signing on’ within the MPS. It has been estimated that this could save the MPS some £6 million a year. A meeting was held last September between the ABU, the Crown Prosecution Service and Operation Emerald at which the principle of a reduction was accepted. Further work continues to be undertaken by Operation Emerald towards this process and a Police Notice is now under preparation to effect the necessary changes.

Efficiency savings

6. Finance Services now co-ordinate the MPS Efficiency Plan for 2006-07 and future years. They will ensure that the MPS delivers cashable and non-cashable efficiency savings to meet the annual 3% target: circa £75m for 2006-07. (Full details of these savings are published in the MPA Revenue and Capital Budget Book 2006/07.) They will also work with the Met Modernisation Programme to help develop an underlying Value for Money (VfM) and Efficiency strategy.

Criminal Justice

7. The NSPIS Case and Custody system continues to be piloted at Newham BOCU. Full MPS rollout of the Custody system is due to begin this September, and is scheduled to take eleven months. However, provisional estimates suggests it will be at least three years before the Crown Prosecution Service is fully linked into the system. There is no firm estimate as to when the Courts will be fully incorporated into the system.

Forms

8. Since Feb 2006, the Forms Unit have scrapped 50 forms as a result of their regular monthly reviews. In the same period, the ABU has reviewed and amended some 46 forms. The ‘self populating’ process created and implemented by the Forms Unit won first prize in this years national Bureaucracy Award Scheme.

Service Suggestion Scheme

9. The MPS still remains unclear as to the need for a corporate Suggestion Scheme. Following a review by Stephen Rimmer earlier this year, a decision was made to use the Commissioners ‘Ask the Commissioner’ forum to seek and help implement any suggestions. This process is due to begin within the next few months. The ABU has approximately 45 suggestions under varying stages of development.

Officer/staff consultation

10. The ABU website and SIG site are continually updated with news and information. In addition, comments and concerns sent to the Met Modernisation Team relating to anti bureaucracy themes are dealt with exclusively by the ABU.

MPS issues – strategic and structural developments

11. For some considerable time, the status and function of the ABU has been uncertain. In February 2006 Stephen Rimmer, Director of the Modernisation, Strategy and Performance Directorate, appointed Cdr Gary Copson to review the existing arrangements and to develop strategic thinking to embed anti-bureaucracy within the modernisation programme.

12. Cdr Copson has written a series of discussion papers for presentation by Stephen Rimmer to Management, Performance and Investment Boards. The underlying principle of these papers (which are available on request) is this:

13. Bureaucracy needs not to be thought of in the pejorative sense that press and politicians tend to use when seeking a soft target. Bureaucracy in its proper sense is indivisible from professionalism and even anti-bureaucracy is not essentially about paperwork because almost all our paperwork falls into three categories:

• that which is obligatory upon us for reasons of democratic and legal accountability
• statutory requirements upon us from the CPS and the courts (CPIA is a very good example of this)
• essential protection against both genuine and malicious civil action, which can be launched up to seven years after events that will inevitably be long forgotten by then without a robust formal record.

14. Instead it is suggested that anti-bureaucracy be understood along these lines:

• processes that are unnecessarily inefficient – especially those requiring duplication of effort
• lack of learning – a corporate failure to identify and spread ethical best practice

15. This makes anti-bureaucracy synonymous with value for money and the acceptance of this principle has led to plans, now under development, to incorporate the Anti-Bureaucracy Unit into a new Value for Money Unit that will assemble a team, initially of about six people, to be the executive arm of the recently established Value for Money Steering Group, a subsidiary of Investment Board, chaired by Stephen Rimmer.

16. Cdr Copson is shortly due to leave the MPS on secondment to HMIC but before departing will develop this strategy further to encompass the co-ordination of corporate learning.

C. Race and equality impact

This is an update paper and there are no new equality or diversity implications at this time.

D. Financial implications

There are no specific financial implications contained in this report.

E. Background papers

• Recommendations of the Policing Bureaucracy Taskforce
• Recommendations of the Policing Bureaucracy Gateway

F. Contact details

Report author: Inspector Ian Feachnie DCC2 (4) and Commander Gary Copson SM&PD, MPS

For more information contact:

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

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