Complaints management information

Report: 7
Date: 14 December 2006
By: T/AC of Intelligence and Standards Command on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report includes data for the 12 months to October 2006. It focuses on the key changes or exceptions within the data, as trends are slow to change.

Workload

There has been an increase of 22% in the number of public complaint allegations being recorded over the past 12 months from a monthly average of 509 to 649.

The number of conduct matter allegations recorded over the same period has stabilised and the monthly average is now 91 per month.

Timeliness

The average number of days to complete a public complaint investigation remains below the threshold of 90-days. It reduced by 8% from 87 days in November 2005 to 80 in October 2006.

The average number of days to complete an investigation into a conduct matter continues to improve and it also remains below the threshold of 90-days. It reduced by 4%, from a peak of 85 days in September 2005 to 82 in October 2006.

The average number of days between the decision to hold a misconduct hearing or final disposal is additionally below the threshold of 100-days at 81 days in October 2006.

A. Recommendations

That Members note the report and the illustration of trends in the report and the Borough performance information contained in Appendices 1 and 2.

B. Supporting information

1. Appendix 1 contains data relating to Borough or Operational Command Unit performance.

2. Appendix 2 contains diversity information in respect of the Borough or Operational Command Units.

MPS/DPS performance

Table 1 - Allegations recorded (see supporting material)

3. There has been an increase of 22% in the number of public complaint allegations being recorded over the past 12 months from a monthly average of 509 to 649.

4. Over the 12 months to October 2006, the average number of conduct matter allegations recorded each month has stabilised at 91.

5. The overall average increase in public complaints in the 12-months to October 2006 is not proportionate across all allegation categories. Using the actual 12-month rolling average figures, over an extended period, it was possible to see that there was a distinct upward trend for certain types. The most significant trend appears with rises in Failures in Duty, Malpractice and to a lesser extent, Discriminatory Behaviour and Incivility.

6. This rise in Discriminatory Behaviour can be traced back to the introduction of the IPCC when there was a widening of the definition of such allegations to include Religion, Gender and Sexuality etc. This category also incorporates the new type of allegations made about ‘Fairness and Impartiality’ bought in by the Commission in April 2004. Although there has been a numerical rise in these types of allegations, as a proportion, they have reduced from 7% of the total in 2004/05 to 6% at the end of 2005/06. For 2006/07, to the end of October, this allegation type is 5% of the total.

7. Failure in Duty allegations continue to rise steadily. At the end of 2005/06 such allegations had risen by over 1000 and represented 38% of all allegations recorded against 27% in both 2003/04 and 2004/05. The rise has continued into 2006/07 with 39% of all allegations being in this category at the end of October. Since the inception of the IPCC, DPS are investigating a higher proportion of failure in duty allegations that have come via the Commission. It is possible that, before the IPCC, some of these issues may not have been bought to the attention of DPS.

8. Incivility allegations have also risen in numerical terms since the inception of the IPCC in April 2004 but have reduced as a proportion of all allegations from 22% of the total in 2003/04 to 17% in 2005/06. At the end of October 2006, they represented 18% of all allegations.

9. Oppressive Behaviour allegations that had previously risen significantly due to the ‘Pro-Hunt’ demonstrations now appear to be on the decline as a proportion of the overall total. In 2004/05 they represented 38%, which reduced to 30% in 2005/06. This has carried through to 2006/07 when, at the end of October, they were 29% of the total.

10. The following table illustrates the number of public complaints recorded over the period November 2005 to October 2006. It is also broken down by type, calculated per 100 officers and the period split into 3-month periods.

Table 2 - Number of public complaints recorded Nov 05 to Oct 06 (see supporting material)

11. The table below illustrates the numbers of allegations by type and whether a period is above the MPS period average in which case the figures will be in both blue and bold text. The MPS total number of allegations, per 100 officers, over the 12-month period is also shown for comparison.

12. Period 2 and 3, February 2006 to July 2006, shows the rise in Failure in Duty allegations resulting from the Danish Newspaper Cartoon protests recorded during this period. Other allegations types appearing above the period averages are small enough as to not be significant.

Timeliness - public complaints

Table 3 -  Average days taken to complete full investigation & all other results (see supporting material)

Meeting target - Investigating complaints within the 90-day threshold (80 days)

13. The average number of days to complete a public complaint has dropped by one day to 81 days and has remained at a similar level since December 2005.

14. Since November 2005, the average number of days taken to complete an investigation has reduced by 8% from 87 days to 80 in October 2006.

Meeting target - A month on month reduction in the average number of days to complete an investigation (1% decrease on the previous month)

15. There was a reduction of 1% in the average number of days taken to complete an investigation.

16. Presently, the potential to improve significantly further in this area is unlikely, as the current level has been achieved through changes to business processes and practices. However, with effect from July 2007, the changes to legislation bought about by the Taylor Review will afford another opportunity to review these practices.

17. It should be noted that, with the implementation of these reforms, there is the prospect that timeliness will suffer with the move to see lower level misconduct investigations undertaken locally. There will be a greater need to implement a robust performance management framework, with associated performance indicators, that can be monitored centrally and poor performers held to account.

Table 4 - Average Days Taken to Submit Dispensation/Discontinuance Requests to the IPCC (see supporting material)

Meeting target - Submitting requests for Dispensations/Discontinuances to the IPCC within a 60 day target (70 days)

18. Since November 2005, the average number of days taken to submit a dispensation or discontinuance request to the IPCC has reduced by 13% from 83 days to 70 days. However, although the trend is positive, this still remains above the 60-day target.

Table 5 - Average Days Taken to achieve a Local Resolution (see supporting material)

Meeting target - Average days taken to achieve a Local Resolution (60 day Target)

19. Since November 2005, the average number of days taken to achieve a local resolution has reduced by 4% from 52 days to 50 days. This is currently within the 60-day target.

20. Analysis of local resolutions reveals that, in the 12-months to October 2006, 57% have been achieved by DPS staff and the remaining 43% by Boroughs themselves. The proportion of local resolutions undertaken by DPS has increased, when compared to the previous 12 months, where it was previously 47%.

21. The decision for DPS staff to undertake as many local resolutions as possible was made at the Investigations Command SMT to ensure that timeliness remained under control.

Table 6 - Percentage of cases over 120-days [1] old – Public Complaints / Conduct Matters (see supporting material)

Meeting expectation - A reduction in the percentage of public complaint cases over 120-days [1] old.

22. Following the impact of the significant incidents in July 2005 and the subsequent increase in the percentage of public complaint cases over 120-days [1] old, DPS continue to reduce this from a peak of 27% in October 2005 (179 of 667 cases) to 21% (203 of 962 cases) in October 2006. Although the trend remains downwards, there is still some way to go to achieve pre-July 2005 levels of between 14% and 17%.

Conduct matters

Table 7 - Average days taken to complete an investigation (see supporting material)

Meeting target - The average number of days to complete an investigation (82 against a 90 threshold)

23. The average number of days to complete a conduct matter investigation remains below the threshold of 90-days. It reduced by 4%, from a peak of 85 days in September 2005 to 82 in October 2006.

Meeting expectation - A reduction in the percentage of conduct matter cases over 120-days [1] old

24. Following the significant impact of the incidents in July 2005, Conduct Matters over 120-days [1] old rose from 36% (48 of 133 cases) in June to a peak of 60% (64 of 107 cases) in November 2005. However, since then, the trend is downward and at 28% (39 of 137 cases) in October 2006 is at its lowest since monitoring of this indicator began in 2001.

Misconduct

Table 8 - Misconduct – Average number of days from decision to hearing or final disposal (see supporting material)

Meeting target - Average days to reach Misconduct decisions (81 against 100 threshold)

25. The average number of days between the decision to hold a misconduct hearing or reach a final disposal remains below the revised threshold of 100-days.

External partners – CPS decision making

Table 9 - Average number of days from report to receipt of decision from CPS (see supporting material)

26. The chart, on the previous page, illustrates the timeliness of the CPS decision-making in respect of the Specialist Investigation work, such as Deaths Following Police Contact and Discharge of Police Firearms and the more routine complaint and conduct investigations of the Borough Support Units.

External partners – IPCC decision making

Table 10 - Average number of days from report submission to receipt of decision from IPCC (see supporting material)

27. The chart above reveals the average time taken for the IPCC to reach decisions in dispensation and discontinuance cases.

Table 11 - Number of appeals made to the IPCC by type and outcome (see supporting material)

28. The chart above shows the number of appeals made to the IPCC where a decision has been received from the Commission within the last 12 months. It illustrates the type of appeal being made and the validity of that appeal as determined by the IPCC.

29. In future reports we intend to supply data for the current 12 months compared with the previous 12 months. To achieve this we need to ‘back record convert’ the data we hold manually to the new TRIBUNE fields. It is planned to conduct a further reconciliation exercise with the IPCC following the upgrade of TRIBUNE scheduled for early 2007.

Outcome trends

Table 12 - Public Complaints Finalised allegation by result  (see supporting material)

30. The average percentage of local resolutions has reduced in the 12-month period from 36% in October 2005 to 32% in October 2006 and remains considerably below the target of 50%. Whilst the proportions of the other outcomes affect this figure, it is likely to remain low until BOCUs are able to take on more responsibility for the resolution of their own complaints and undertake lower level investigations.

31. There are however tensions between the desire to see more issues being dealt with locally e.g. Local Resolutions and the scrutiny DPS is under to improve timeliness. DPS investigators losing close control over a complaint being investigated/resolved on borough can adversely impact on their timeliness and the inclination is for them to recall the file and deal with it themselves.

32. The increase in the proportion of allegations shown as not recorded as public complaints, under the Police Reform Act, in the current 12-month is due to the finalisation of 809 allegations arising out of the Danish Newspaper Cartoon protests.

Borough (BOCU)/Operational Command Unit (OCU) performance – public complaints: allegations and people

33. At each Professional Standards and Complaints Committee members will be presented with a comparative analysis of public complaint data relating to groups of (B)OCUs in relation to MPS professional standards matters.

34. The BOCU groupings are made using the Territorial Policing Performance Focus Meeting (TP PFM) cluster.

35. The exception to this is what DPS have called Group 6, which consists of TP non-Borough based units and non-TP Operational Command Units.

36. The TP families have been grouped together based on demographics and volume crime within the boroughs in question. Both of these factors are likely to affect complaints. By using these family groups and converting actual numbers of complaints recorded into a ‘per 100 officers’ figure enables more accurate comparisons to be made.

37. This information provides a benchmark against which the Authority will be able to judge the Directorate of Professional Standard’s Professional Standards Support Programme (PSSP) in the future by looking for variations in performance from this report to the next occasion the same family group appears.

38. The PSSP is being launched on 27 November 2006 and will commence using TP PFM Group 2 in January 2007. (TP PFM includes Bexley, Bromley, Havering, Kingston, Merton, Sutton and Richmond Boroughs).

39. Variations in performance of each of the boroughs when compared to their peers are highlighted in both blue and bold text. Variations could be for any number of reasons such as a particular operation/initiative being run on the borough or environmental factors such as the number of licensed premises, entertainment venues or shopping centres. The demographics in relation to both the resident and transient population and the length of service and experience of the officers concerned will also be relevant factors.

40. It should be noted that, once the ‘per 100 officers’ element is introduced to the data, some of the numbers are small which makes it difficult to draw any significant conclusions from them.

41. Because a Borough or Command Unit is different from their peers does not automatically mean that they are worse.

42. Where significant variations are noted, DPS will work with the boroughs through the PSSP to discover the potential causes by drilling down into the data to establish the exact nature and likely cause of the variation. Where appropriate action will be taken by the borough in partnership with DPS to bring closer to them closer to the average of similar boroughs in their group.

43. The group of boroughs under focus for this period are from Group 6 (TP non Borough based units and non-TP Operational Command Units). The data and associated analysis is presented in Appendix 1.

C. Race and equality impact

Appendix 2 includes MPS data in respect of diversity relating to both complainants and officers that is compared against the family of Boroughs or Operational Command Units in focus.

D. Financial implications

None

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author(s): Michael Clark, Higher Performance Analyst and Andrew Campbell, Temporary Detective Chief Superintendent, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

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