London ICV Scheme radio interview

Transcript of radio interview

The following transcript is of and interview given on Nusound community radio station, aired on 2 June 2009 at 11.30 to promote the ICV scheme during National Volunteers’ Week.

Nusound:

 Welcome to Laura from the Metropolitan Police Authority, good morning. Now this is a fantastic opportunity to talk about National Volunteers’ Week, as not everyone will be aware of what it’s all about. Can you tell us more about it?

Laura:

 National Volunteers week is an annual celebration of the contributions that volunteers make to the UK and this is the 25th year of doing this. It exists to ensure that all voluntary schemes recognise the contributions that volunteers make to their local communities.

Nusound:

 Now the volunteers don’t get paid, do they?

Laura:

No, none of them get paid; they give up their time for the good of the people around them.

Nusound:

There are lots of good people in our community, aren’t there.

Laura:

Yes, yes there are. We have we’ve got 400 volunteers across London volunteering for the MPA, we’re very grateful for the work that they do and they make an enormous contribution to our work.

Nusound:

You have 400 volunteers for the MPA?

Laura:

Yes, we have 400 volunteering for our scheme which is the Independent Custody Visiting Scheme in London.

Nusound:

What’s it all about?

Laura:

Our volunteers are independent members of the community and they make completely unannounced visits to police stations across London to check on the way detainees in police custody are being treated. They check on their treatment and conditions while they’re in police custody.

Nusound:

These are unannounced?

Laura:

Completely unannounced so the police don’t know when they’re coming, it might be any time of the day or night any day of the week, most police stations in London are visited every week, but the police don’t know when that visit is going to come.

Nusound:

Who coordinates these volunteers, have they got their own independent body?

Laura:

Well at the police authority we coordinate it for London, and each borough has a panel of volunteers and those panels are chaired by an independent member of the community, one of the volunteers is elected by the other volunteers to chair that panel. Then at the MPA we coordinate them, we facilitate their dialogue with the police, we take up any issues if we feel it’s necessary.

Nusound:

Laura what’s the criteria to be a volunteer with yourselves, is there an age limit or an upper or lower limit?

Laura:

We think it’s really important that everyone in London has confidence in their local police, and this scheme is all about making sure community members know what’s going on in their local police stations and that they can trust the police to do a good job and treat people fairly while they’re in custody. So it’s really important to us that people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all faiths, all ethnic groups and all ages volunteer for us. We want as diverse a bunch of people as possible, having said that it’s not really an appropriate environment for those under 18, so we take people over 18. They need to be security vetted, because they are going to quite a sensitive environment they’re talking to detainees in police custody sometimes before they’ve been charged so the police do a criminal records check on everybody and for that to be possible we need people who have lived in the UK for the last 3 years. But other than those requirements, we really take anybody we’re not looking for specific skills or experience we want everybody, we want people that represent every community in London.

Nusound:

 So you want people across the board?

Laura:

Absolutely, across the board.

Nusound:

How can people get involved, what do they have to do?

Laura:

We have an application form and that can be downloaded from the website. People can find out lots more info about the history of the scheme, how it came to be, and they can get application information. The address is www.icvlondon.org.uk or you can call us on 0808 100 1036, also we’ve now got a page on Facebook so if you type ICV London in to the search bar of Facebook, you’ll see a page that’s got all of our information as well, and that repeats our contact details.

Nusound:

I can’t believe that everyone’s on Facebook these days! How wonderful.

Laura:

Well as I said we’re keen to reach out to everybody and that includes younger people, and it tends to be a younger generation that use Facebook, although that is spreading.

Nusound:

It’s all about accessibility though isn’t it?

Laura:

It is, exactly. And one of the reasons we’re talking today is that we’re hoping to reach out to more people, and I understand you’re an east London radio station, (Nusound: we are) we’ve certainly got vacancies for people in Newham at the moment, Newham, Haringey, K&C, Lambeth, Merton, Southwark, Westminster, we need people in all of those boroughs. But I know Newham is one of the boroughs you broadcast to.

Nusound:

And Laura do they have to be in their borough, for example can someone from Newham be on the panel for K&C or do you have to be in your borough?

Laura:

 Well, we think it’s quite important that you have some kind of local connection with the borough because you want to have some kind of trust and faith in the police that you’re going to come in to contact with.

Nusound:

And you can relate to your borough?

Laura:

Exactly, it doesn’t necessarily have to be where you live, we’d like you to either live, work or study in the borough that you volunteer for, so you don’t necessarily have to volunteer where you live it could be where you work or where you study.

Nusound:

 Ok, and are you looking for lots more people. Say for example if you get flooded with applications will you be picking all of them or some of them, or just a few, how does it work, have you got a pool of people?

Laura:

Certainly in those boroughs I’ve just mentioned, in Newham and in K&C we’re keen for members, so in those boroughs we offer people an interview, which is really an informal interview and it’s really to make sure people understand what they’re letting themselves in for, that they understand they’re going in to a custody environment and they’re talking to detainees and they understand a bit about what we’re doing and what our aims are. But we would interview people who applied in any of those boroughs because we really need people in those boroughs. In other boroughs there’s likely to be a short waiting list, waiting lists vary but we’d keep people, if people had an interest and there wasn’t an immediate vacancy we’d put them on a waiting list and interview them as soon as we had a space.

Nusound:

And what if people do sign up, and are accepted, how long do they have to be a volunteer for? Is there an upper limit?

Laura:

Well, they can volunteer for as long as they like and in fact something we’re doing to celebrate National Volunteers’ Week this week is that we’re having an awards ceremony on Thursday night and we’ll be recognising some of the long service that our volunteers have given, we’ve got about 25 who’ve given more than 10 years to scheme so that’s a really major achievement, and we’re going to say a huge thank you to them on Thursday night. We’ve got the Deputy Mayor for policing, and the MPA’s Vice Chair, Kit Malthouse who’ll be there to present the awards.

So there isn’t an upper limit on how long people can be custody visitors, it does take a while to get through all security vetting checks, perhaps 6 weeks to 2 months, so we do ask that people have about a year minimum to give up for the scheme, because otherwise it’s not really the application process and the security checks, so we’d like people that are prepared to give at least a year really.
But it’s not a big time commitment custody visitors usually visit probably once a month and a visit would take an hour to an hour and half, and then there’s likely to be a meeting with the police probably every 6 weeks where they can raise any issues that they’ve discovered through their visits, so it’s not a major time commitment.

Nusound:

So basically when you look at it, it’s about 2-2.5 hours a month, which isn’t a lot anyway is it?

Laura:

No, it’s a little something you can give to making sure that everybody in your community is being treated fairly and properly.

Nusound:

So Laura can you give us the website details again? If people want to register.

Laura:

Sure that’s www.icvlondon.org.uk

Nusound:

And the telephone number?

Laura:

Is 0808 100 1036.

Nusound:

Laura, thank you very much. I’m sure a lot of us did not know there was an independent custody visiting scheme in our area, especially in Newham.

Laura:

Well I hope we’ve raised awareness a little bit of the scheme then today.

Nusound:

That’s fantastic and I wish you luck with the National Volunteers’ Week, and are you going to the awards ceremony?

Laura:

Yes, absolutely I look forward to thanking our volunteers for the contribution they’ve made.

Nusound:

Well, thank you ever so much for taking the time and talking to us.

Laura:

Thanks a lot, thank you Sujata.

Nusound:

Take care, goodbye. That was Laura from the Metropolitan Police Authority talking to us about the independent custody visiting scheme. And if you want be a volunteer all you have to do is go to the website which is www.icvlondon.org.uk and the phone number is 0808 1001036

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