Policing in Warwickshire
Policing in Warwickshire Contents
Introduction
The aim of this Policing Plan is to inform our communities as to how we tackle crime and disorder, protect from harm and increase public confidence whilst also ensuring that we deliver acceptable, affordable and ultimately sustainable policing services. The development of this Plan has been influenced by various factors, of which the constraints identified by our financial planning processes have been paramount. Outlined below are the principles, which underpin the delivery of policing in Warwickshire.
Home Secretary’s Policing Priorities
In publishing the below priorities for the police service, the Home Secretary has taken into account the recently published Policing White Paper, the current set of Public Service Agreements (PSA’s) and the latest Crime Strategy. The Government also outlined its commitment for the service to tackle the harms caused by anti-social behaviour and to ensure that the concerns of victims of crime are taken seriously. We welcome this clarity of purpose. We also welcome the continuing flexibility to tackle the issues that matter most to our communities. We are confident that by delivering the objectives contained in this Plan we will effectively contribute to the delivery of the Government’s policing and community safety-related agenda.
1. Continue to increase public confidence so that by March 2012 60% of the public agree that the police and local council are dealing with the anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in their local communities
2. Work jointly through partners and local communities to reduce and prevent crime and anti-social behaviour and the problems caused by drug and alcohol misuse and youth offending, in line with PSA’s 14, 23 and 25, and in a coordinated approach with other CJS (Criminal Justice Sector) partners deliver an effective criminal justice response in line with PSA 24, putting the needs of victims, including young victims, at its heart
3. Work jointly with police forces and other agencies, such as SOCA (Serious and Organised Crime Agency) and UKBA (United Kingdom Border Agency), to ensure that the capability and capacity exists across England and Wales to deliver effective protective services, including tackling serious and organised crime
4. Work jointly with and through partners and local communities to tackle terrorism and violent extremism in line with the counter terrorism strategy (CONTEST) and PSA 26
5. In all of the above, ensure that value for money is central to the strategic vision for improving policing; that best use is made of resources in line with the policing White Paper and the Efficiency and Productivity Strategy for the Police Service, both within forces and through collaboration between forces and with the wider public sector; and that chief officers and senior leaders are visibly associated with this organisational priority
A Framework to Protect: Our Vision, Mission and Values
Our Vision
Our vision remains: Protecting our communities together.
We continue to realise this vision by managing the risk of harm, focusing on those harms that are most serious and most likely to occur. In delivering our vision we are committed to:
- Reducing the number of people killed on our roads or by crime
- Reducing crimes of violence and road injuries
- Protecting people from loss, such as having their possessions stolen
- Protecting against distress: giving people confidence to go about their lives without fear
Our Mission
Our mission remains: Warwickshire Police exists to protect communities, prevent and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and provide public reassurance.
- We take pride in serving our communities and delivering local policing in order to earn the trust and confidence of the public
- We will recognise what we are good at and work to strengthen where we are not
- We will ensure that our people are well trained, highly motivated and empowered to provide excellent service delivery
- We will strive to provide a consistent and focused approach to listening and responding to our communities concerns and protect them from harm, loss or distress
- We aim to achieve this by providing strong leadership and working together to find solutions to local needs
Our Values
Our values remain: We all work for the communities of Warwickshire. Together we will live our vision and values. We will:
- Be accessible to the public, increase our visibility and contact with communities
- Respond to requests for assistance by providing the right service, promptly, effectively, at the first time of asking and honouring our commitments and promises
- Expect high standards of appearance and behaviour
- Treat everyone fairly with respect and dignity, maximising and promoting diversity
- Constantly seek opportunities to be more effective and efficient through partnership, collaboration and new ways of working
- Ensure that we are professional, responsive and caring, acting with integrity, being straightforward, open and honest
- Develop, support and empower our people to make courageous decisions and learn from experience
- Set clear objectives and explicit standards for our staff, underpinned by our Performance and Development Review system, recognising and rewarding good performance
- Put communities first by listening, understanding and responding to their needs
- Expect people to take personal ownership and responsibility for solving problems and delivering a quality service
- Lead with confidence; consistently challenge unacceptable performance, behaviour and standards within a supportive environment
- Proactively solve problems, plan for the future and focus activities on successful outcomes
Equality, Diversity and Human Rights
It is essential that as a service provider and employer we exercise equality, embrace diversity and uphold human rights. Our Equality, Diversity and Human Rights strategy sets out how: we will ensure all our communities have trust in us and can access our services and; we are an inclusive organisation that reflects the communities we work for and serve. During 2010/11 we will:
- Implement the Equality Standard for the Police Service, a national benchmark of good practice
- Undertake a Human Rights audit to check we are fully compliant with legislation and working to the highest standards
- Introduce employment targets for under-represented groups
Our current Combined Equality Scheme sets out how we are fulfilling our key statutory duties and includes the positive steps we are taking to promote excellent standards of equality and diversity in service provision and employment practices, in relation to ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion and belief and gender identity.
The Resources to Protect: Financial Summary
Introduction
This Plan sets out how we will: address locally identified concerns; and protect local people from the harm caused by serious and organised criminality. We are committed to maximising the levels of protection delivered within the confines of the identified budget. As a result of our financial planning processes we are aware that we face considerable financial pressures over the lifetime of this Plan. These pressures include the Government’s decision to limit the Authority’s budget setting capabilities and the likelihood of lower than anticipated increases in central and local funding. Despite these constraints we remain committed to setting a good and balanced budget, capable of delivering affordable, acceptable and sustainable policing services. We have summarised below our revenue budget outlining the amount we receive and our resultant spending plans.
Where our income comes from
How we plan to spend it
Key
Policing Priorities 2010/11
Introduction
At the heart of this Plan are three themes which underpin our ability to realise our vision - Protecting our communities together. These themes are delivering protection, inspiring confidence and maximising value. We have aligned our priorities and supporting measures with these themes. By involving Authority Members and senior Police Managers in the development of this framework we are confident that our priorities and supporting measures reflect the issues that matter most to people locally and address the threats identified by our intelligence gathering and analytical processes. During 2010/11 it is our intention to maximise the protection delivered within the resources available. The suite of measures published below defines the scale of the challenge that we have set ourselves.
Delivering Protection
To reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured
- Reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured through road traffic collisions compared with last year by 2.5%
To be achieved by working in partnership to educate drivers, re-engineer roads and enforce the law, specifically targeting those drivers who pose the greatest risk to other road users and Warwickshire’s residents. - Reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured as a result of violence compared with last year
To be achieved by managing those people who cause violence and implementing strategies to minimise the threat they pose. - Detect 45% of crimes where someone is killed or seriously injured
To be achieved by swiftly responding and efficiently managing investigations ensuring every evidential avenue is explored and any opportunities to tackle those people responsible for committing violent crime are maximised. - Increase the number of serious sexual offences we detect compared with last year or a baseline of 2008/09 whichever is greater
To be achieved by continually improving the end-to-end investigation of serious sexual assaults and by working closely with specialist Crown Prosecution lawyers and rape support services. - Reduce the number of victims of robbery compared with last year
To be achieved by building increasingly effective intelligence pictures around offenders, locations, premises and timescales. These ‘Harm Causers’ will be allocated to specific officers who will account for their activities. - Reduce the threat of organised crime groups on the communities of Warwickshire by 15%
To be achieved by pro-actively targeting organised crime groups and networks impacting upon Warwickshire. We will utilise all available policing techniques and work collaboratively with our partner agencies, both on a regional and national level, to achieve our objectives.
To reduce the number of homes burgled and vehicle crimes committed
- Reduce the number of homes burgled compared with last year
To be achieved by robustly managing and targeting ‘High Harm Causers’, ‘Prolific and Priority Offenders’ and emerging harm causers/young offenders and working with our partners to further reduce opportunities for offending. - Reduce vehicle crime compared with last year
To be achieved by robustly managing and targeting ‘High Harm Causers’, ‘Prolific and Priority Offenders’ and emerging harm causers/young offenders and working with our partners to further reduce opportunities for offending.
Inspiring Confidence
To improve trust and confidence
- Local Safer Neighbourhood teams will deliver 100% of agreed policing activity that a) protects from harm, b) tackles anti-social behaviour, c) builds confidence and support community priorities
To be achieved by our Safer Neighbourhood sergeants agreeing what the local team will do to support the agreed priorities and reporting progress back to the local Community Forum. - Increase the number of victims of serious sexual offences who report crimes to us compared with last year
To be achieved by the improvements our sexual offences team continue to make to the investigative process and the way we work with our partners, resulting in victims feeling more confident to report such crimes to the police or other support agencies. - Ensure at least 85% of victims are satisfied with the overall experience they receive
To be achieved by implementing our Safer Neighbourhood Team community engagement strategy, delivering the service standards contained within the Policing Pledge and building upon our Right Service, First Time approach to seek opportunities to continue to improve the way we police locally. - Ensure 53.3% of people agree that ‘the police and council are dealing with the anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in this area’ based on December 2010 British Crime Survey results
To be achieved by our Safer Neighbourhood teams improving the way they engage with the communities they police, better understanding local issues and concerns and improving the way we work with our partners to address them.
Maximising Value
To maintain an efficient and effective police force that is affordable acceptable and sustainable
- Over the duration of this Plan to save £12m, of which £5.7 million (full year effect) to be saved during 2010/11
To be achieved by reviewing our services and redesigning the way we deliver affordable, acceptable and sustainable policing.
The key issues influencing our policing priorities
In developing our 2010/11 policing priorities we have focussed on:
- Our vision - protecting our communities together and our continuing commitment to protect people from the risk of harm
- Our 2010/11 Control Strategy, which identifies the primary operational/policing threats that we face in policing our county
- The Home Secretary’s Policing Priorities, specifically focussing on inspiring confidence and delivering value for money
- Our Medium Term Financial Planning Strategy, which identifies the need to reduce expenditure by around 10% if we are to be able to develop a good and balanced budget, that underpins affordable, acceptable and sustainable policing services
- The priorities agreed by our multi-agency Community Forums. This provides the focus locally to address those issues and concerns, which adversely impact upon the quality of life being experienced locally
We have also taken account of the following principles:
- Focus on preventing harm, however where this is not possible we will take positive action to minimise its impact. By harm we mean death, injury, loss and fear/distress
- Continue to focus effort on reducing the disproportionate harms that occur in our three priority policing areas
- Deliver more protection (against our policing priority measures) during 2010/11 than we did during 2009/10
- Focus our resources on dealing with those people who cause the most harm, rather than on crime-specific detection rates
Delivering our priorities
Having developed and agreed our policing priorities it is imperative that we effectively monitor our progress. This includes:
- Publishing daily county, district/borough and safer neighbourhood team priority crime related information on our Intranet
- Producing a weekly exception report highlighting priority areas for Chief Officers and Members
- Producing a monthly highlight report identifying those performance issues that need to be brought to Members attention
- Providing performance summaries to our Force Executive Board, Force Management Group and Police Authority meetings
- Holding ¼ly district/borough and protective services performance reviews where progress in achieving our priorities is assessed
- Monitoring our corporate performance framework demonstrating the contribution each function makes to realising our vision
- Creating, agreeing and delivering objectives as part of our appraisal process that identifies the contributions of individuals
- Producing, monitoring and reviewing a series of Implementation Plans underpinning the delivery of our Control Strategy
Information about crime in your area can be accessed via our crime mapping system.
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