Inspiring Confidence
Inspiring Confidence Contents
Introduction
Whilst our vision focuses on delivering greater protection to our communities by reducing crime, it is equally important that we inspire their trust and confidence in our ability to address the crime and anti-social behaviour issues which adversely impact upon their quality of life. It is also important that having gained their trust and confidence, that those people who are required to use our services are satisfied with the way they were delivered. Over the lifecycle of this Plan we are looking to achieve our nationally set confidence target of at least 58% and during the current year for at least 85% of service users to be satisfied with the ‘whole policing experience’. In driving up performance in this area we are focusing our efforts on five particular strands of activity, which are:
- Community volume crime. We are now deploying PCSO’s to visit all Warwickshire victims of garage/shed burglaries, criminal damage and vehicle crime and their neighbours to provide crime prevention advice, engage with local people about their issues and concerns and improve visibility
- Performance. We have implemented a district/borough and force confidence performance framework, which provides a wealth of information including the national British Crime Survey (BCS) and local BCS confidence measures, user satisfaction, Right Service First Time data and the PLACE survey. We are currently in the process of setting targets, which will be performance managed through our monthly tasking meetings
- Marketing and communication. We will continue to run targeted marketing campaigns at both force and district/borough level, aimed at raising public confidence. We are also considering how we can make best use of digital technology to better engage with people
- Community engagement. We will improve the way we engage with our communities so that we better understand their issues and concerns and working with our partners tailor our responses accordingly
- Anti-social behaviour. We are focusing on the way that we, in conjunction with our partners, respond to anti-social behaviour. Work on developing our response to this issue continues
Policing Pledge
The Policing Pledge sets out what people can expect from their local police force and our partners when it comes to crime and anti-social behaviour. We are committed to delivering these national standards.
During 2009 our commitment to the Pledge was scrutinised by the HMIC, which awarded us a ‘Fair’ rating. Whilst this grade does recognise the progress we have made it also demonstrates that we can improve further and we remain committed to further developing our responsiveness in this area. Two such examples include the continued development of our Consultation and Community Engagement Strategy and work to deliver an Integrated Service Plan.
Our Integrated Service Delivery Plan evolved from a review of our network of front offices in police stations, which identified that we needed to review our approach to contact management. This Plan is looking to ensure that we can continually respond to changes in the way people want to access our services and that we are capable of providing the right services in the right way and at the right time.
We continually seek feedback as to how we can further improve the quality and range of policing services that we deliver. This can be provided in person to any officer at one of our stations or electronically to the relevant Safer Neighbourhood team via the Warwickshire Police website.
Right Service First Time
Introduced last year Right Service, First Time (RSFT) ensures that we deliver appropriate and proportionate responses to policing needs. Our approach to dealing with 999, urgent and priority calls remains unchanged, however, requests that do not require immediate attention continue to be managed through a process of surgery appointments with a police officer or operational police staff at a police station or other suitably agreed location. We remain committed to fulfilling these appointments, depending upon the availability of the caller, by at least the next working day. Where this is not possible we will always make contact and rearrange.
We have recently completed a post implementation review of this approach to ensure that it is working as we originally intended and that our original recommendations have been successfully implemented and that the anticipated benefits are being realised. Of the initial sixteen recommendations, the majority have been delivered in full or significant progress has been made.
Overall RSFT has been a resounding success. We now offer a much-improved service, through our police station surgeries and appointment cars, to the people who report incidents not requiring the immediate deployment of a police resource.
There is still work to be done, and as we move forward we will be addressing how to make the best use of any capacity that is released as a result of this approach to service delivery.
Consultation and Community Engagement Strategy
As a public service provider it is imperative that we consult and engage with our communities. This strategy seeks to provide a framework against which local people can shape the delivery of policing in their community. However, effective engagement is about more than just listening, it requires us to keep people informed and provide relevant and timely feedback on the progress being made to address local issues and concerns. We believe that effective community engagement is about:
- Identifying our communities - whether these are geographical or based on special interests, for example: beliefs, skills, relationships, or shared experiences
- Working to find ways of creating a dialogue with communities and listening to their views
- Finding ways of incorporating local views into policing activity, empowering local people to become involved and influence the development of long-term sustainable solutions
- Providing feedback to people around the actions taken as a result of listening to and acting on their views and stated priorities
We have established a set of minimum standards, which we aim to continually develop as we demonstrate our willingness to provide policing services that deal with those issues that matter most to the communities we serve.
Delivery of this strategy will be underpinned by the following four principles:
- Access - to policing or community safety services through a named contact point
- Influence - over community safety priorities in their neighbourhood
- Interventions - joint action with communities and partners to solve problems
- Answers - sustainable long term solutions to problems along with feedback on progress and results
In delivering this strategy we will look to engage with local people through a variety of approaches, however, our primary mechanism for engaging with our communities will continue to be the multi-agency Community Forums. Held regularly in each of our Safer Neighbourhood areas these meetings provide local people and their representatives with the opportunity to express their views and concerns and to influence locally agreed priorities.
PCSO Deployment Strategy
As part of our Consultation and Community Engagement Strategy we aim to ensure that our Police Community Support Officers (PCSO’s) sit at the heart of neighbourhood policing. Our PCSO’s now visit the victims and neighbours of vehicle crime, shed/garage burglary, and criminal damage to provide crime prevention advice and engage with local people to identify and understand their issues and concerns. These information packs also contain a copy of our Policing Pledge leaflet so that victims of crime are aware of the standards they can expect from us.
To support our PCSO’s identify and understand local issues and concerns we have developed ‘survey pads’ which provide local people with the opportunity to identify the community safety issues that matter most in their local community and whether they want these ‘priorities’ to be fed back to their local Community Forum. A tear off slip at the bottom of the pad confirms the name of the PCSO they have spoken to and whether they have requested feedback, whilst the reverse provides details about the Safer Neighbourhood Teams website. We hope that this approach will demonstrate our commitment to work with local people to develop sustainable long-term solutions that address the issues that matter most locally.
In an effort to ensure our communities realise our commitment to providing a proportionate and appropriate response to incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour we have produced ‘we called to see you’ notepads. When conducting follow up visits or attending an agreed appointment with reporting residents and surrounding neighbours we will post a ‘we called to see you’ sheet, which provides the contact details of their Safer Neighbourhood Team and directions to the Safer Neighbourhood website, through the door when we are unable to make contact.
Anti-social Behaviour
Central to the Home Secretary’s current priorities is a renewed focus on tackling the harms caused by anti-social behaviour. We recognise that this can adversely impact upon the quality of life experienced locally, a fact illustrated by recent reports in the media. We remain committed to dealing with the issues that really matter to our communities and will again promise to deliver 100% of the policing activity agreed by our Community Forums that protect people from harm.
Tackling anti-social behaviour is also an issue, which requires and benefits from strong partnership working. Such partnership working is contributing to a significant reduction in the harm being caused locally. Based around early intervention and prevention we are issuing warning and advisory letters for low-level anti social behaviour through to seeking criminal anti-social behaviour orders (CRASBO) for high harm causers.
In addition to the above commitment we have also reviewed the way we deal with incidents of anti-social behaviour. In line with our vision it is imperative that we effectively identify, as early as possible, the threats faced so that these risks can be managed in a proportionate and co-ordinated way. We have recognised the need to effectively deal with these incidents so that repeat incidents, which will inform our decision-making and resource allocation processes can be easily identified.
Using the available technology we can now dynamically analyse our call data to identify the number and type of calls we have received from a given number and where pre-determined parameters have been exceeded immediately notify the control room operator. Once triggered, the latest incident is automatically brought to the attention of our Briefing Officers and the appropriate District/Borough is informed. Recorded within the appropriate District/Borough’s daily briefing summary, the incident is reviewed, taking into account the previously recorded incidents and a proportionate and effective response delivered. Where it is appropriate to do so these incidents could be recorded on the force’s daily briefing summary and be the subject of a force-wide review.
We believe this facility represents a very real improvement in our ability to easily identify, review and deal with repeat incidents of anti-social behaviour and is further evidence of our commitment to address the quality of life issues that impact on our communities.
Our approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour has also been the subject of a recent HMIC inspection. We are currently awaiting the outcome of this inspection and whilst we are confident that it will be positive, we will reflect upon its findings and look as to how we might address any areas for improvement identified.
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