Complaints against officers

[Fedster + 1,307]

The Policing Minister spoke exclusively to Police Oracle about budgets and pay.

Police Minister Nick Hurd

It is "striking" how frustrated police officers are with their inability to do their job properly, the Policing Minister believes.

Nick Hurd is making a concerted effort to appear open to the concerns of personnel.

In recent months he says he has “spoken to or visited every single force in England and Wales”.

“When I did visit forces I made a point of sitting down with frontline officers when their boss was out of the room, biscuits on the table, [we had a] very frank conversation about what was going well, what was not going well, what they felt about the job.

"It was very striking how consistent the message was about how stretched those officers have felt and the frustration they felt about not being able to do their job properly,” he told PoliceOracle.com in an exclusive interview.

“The Home Secretary and I have made it very clear that we take our responsibility on public safety very seriously,” he added.

But he would not give assurances on the forthcoming funding announcement, currently in its last stages of the Whitehall process for approval.

“I hope what we put forward in December will be something which shows we've listened,” he said.

And yet anyone hoping for a sharp uptake in funding may not want to get too excited.

He hinted that forces will be expected to use their reserves and said they will need to find further efficiencies.

Mr Hurd said that reserves appear too high, but the first time he mentioned it in our interview he said he only wanted to draw attention to the issue. “It is not intended to be a big stick, but come on tell us your story, because it is too opaque.”

But later, when asked about not funding a two per cent pay rise, he said: “[The unfunded one per cent is] a tiny percentage of the police budget, and as we discussed before the police are sitting on a large amount of reserves.”

Nottinghamshire PCC Paddy Tipping who is jointly leading a finance project for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and National Police Chiefs' Council, has repeatedly said that reserves cannot cover the ongoing costs policing faces.

On the pay rise, Mr Hurd said: “Let's be clear, what we did was we accepted the spirit of the recommendation of the independent pay body.”

Immediately challenged by Police Oracle that the government did not accept the pay review recommendation for a fully funded two per cent - instead making one per cent unfunded and non-consolidated, he said: “That's why I said the spirit. What our challenge was then was to find the right balance between accepting that recommendation and structuring it in a way that made it a bit more affordable for forces.

"It was a compromise, we did try to strike a balance. Most PCCs I've spoken to understand what I was trying to do.”

Some police and crime commissioners have, however, condemned the manner of the introduction of pay rise. Bedfordshire's Kathryn Holloway has said her force has been left in an unsustainable position.

According to the Labour Party, a leaked Treasury document indicates the pay rise could cost 2,600 police officer posts.

Asked if chiefs would be happy with the budget they end up with for the next financial year, Mr Hurd was non-committal.

“I'm never sure that chief officers will ever be truly happy, but it was an important [consultation] process, because we heard a very loud, clear, consistent message from the police saying look we're a can-do organisation and we're feeling very streteched.

"I made it quite clear we're not going to be deaf to that,” he said.

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[Zulu 22 + 4,571]

Promises, promises  we have heard them all before from every single political party. I would like to know what reserves the various forces have.

The times of Maggie Thatcher when the Police were supported have long gone.

[Mac7 808]

Unless it is going to be a significant investment in the police they have not listened.

Recent events in GMP have shown that forces need reserves as they cannot rely on central government funding when a major disaster happens.

[HazRat 762]

2 hours ago, Fedster said:

In recent months he says he has “spoken to or visited every single force in England and Wales”.

“When I did visit forces I made a point of sitting down with frontline officers when their boss was out of the room, biscuits on the table, [we had a] very frank conversation about what was going well, what was not going well, what they felt about the job.

He seriously expects us to believe that senior officers would leave federated ranks alone with an MP. Unless the nominated staff were “yes people” put together because they’ll toe the corporate line, then I can’t see it happening as described.

 

I’m fed up with hearing that we can be more efficient. We’ve cut back to the bone. The next conversation we should have is what don’t you want us to do. I’m willing to bet that no one involved in protection duties of the various protected people will see any cuts.

[Hyphen + 693]

I think this is the issue really. If the government don’t want to fund the police service any further or increase numbers and resources then that isn’t going to change.

However the chiefs and PCCs then need to be urgently asking for a full review of the police service and what the government expect from us. Anything not in the list of priorities simply won’t be dealt with and will be passed to the more relevant agencies to pick up or simply not dealt with full stop. Where are the NPCC on this? 

The problem is funding has been drastically cut, support staff are gone, Officer numbers have plummeted yet Chiefs/government have just bumbled along expecting the same results, or the usual phrase ‘more with less’. We seem to have taken on all manner of things under the banner of safeguarding. 

The issues around reserves do need to be looked at, of course every force will be different. There does need to be a balance though in keeping money for a rainy day and actually freeing some of it up of forces are in dire straits.

Sadly this is just a short term fix, does this mean that when the majority of forces have nothing in the reserves the government will significantly boost spending on policing? Will we see this in the next budget? 

One thing I am sick of is suggesting there can be more ‘efficiencies’. I think over the last 7 years we have exhausted these avenues. Things are reaching breaking point if not already there in a lot of forces. 

In relation to the nonsense about chatting to front line officers this is pure fantasy and cloud cuckoo land thinking.

[obsidian_eclipse + 1,202]

There can be efficiencies made. However it means the police taking on no more responsibilities, handing back lots of them more so. Starting with what services we duplicate from other areas. If an agency shuts at 5pm and reopens at 9am - it will need to bare the burden and look at 24hour contingencies. Chiefs and PCCs will have to start pointing the finger and say 'nope'.

Will they though?

[bensonby + 3,503]

The fact that forces have large reserves indicate that they have been efficient, having been able to put aside some of their budgets for contingencies, which puts a bit of a dent in the“you need to make efficiencies” argument doesn’t it?

Edited November 29, 2017 by bensonby

[Beaker 817]

17 minutes ago, bensonby said:

The fact that forces have large reserves indicate that they have been efficient, having been able to put aside some of their budgets for contingencies, which puts a bit of a dent in the“you need to make efficiencies” argument doesn’t it?

In the pirvate sector senior management would consider you to have too much budget if you can save some.  The current crop of loons in Downing Street are of that ilk from everything I've seen, and will assume any public sector organisation that can save some money is being given too much.

[Mac7 808]

Reserves and budgets are different.

 

In the private sector departmental budgets or company budgets wouldn’t be notionally slashed by 10 or 20%. Accountants would work with managers to examine their budgets in detail to see where savings could be made. The government, however, seem to come up with an arbitrary figure to slash budgets by with little regard to whether forces can actually make the cuts.

 

I would like to hear Nick Hurds suggestion on what efficiencies can be made. Sometimes you have to invest to make efficiencies.

 

 

 

[HazRat 762]

I’ve been asked to submit a paper on what I can do with 20 less staff. What activities can I no longer do, how much less proactive will we be etc etc. My unit is tiny cog in a big machine. Most people won’t even notice the reduction in service as I’m sure we’ll pass our work onto other already over worked specialist officers.

[Beaker 817]

Reserves and budgets are different.
 
In the private sector departmental budgets or company budgets wouldn’t be notionally slashed by 10 or 20%. Accountants would work with managers to examine their budgets in detail to see where savings could be made. The government, however, seem to come up with an arbitrary figure to slash budgets by with little regard to whether forces can actually make the cuts.
 
I would like to hear Nick Hurds suggestion on what efficiencies can be made. Sometimes you have to invest to make efficiencies.
 
 
 

I know the difference. When I started for one company they ran the business units by handing them their money for the year, and anything that didn't get spent the unit kept in reserve for any unexpected circumstances. We could retain up to 50k per branch, with some managers managing a 150k ish reserve. Then new management came in, cut budgets to force the reserve to be used, and then made us beg if we wanted something non-essential like uniforms, PPE or expenses. I suspect this is the plan here. Run the reserves down, and force central government agreement on the local forces when they need any unplanned funds.

[James255 + 26]

Mixed messages from Nick Hurd? So he's saying the government have listened, but at the same time don't expect a huge increase in funding? So is it looking like there'll be a small increase in funding then? 

[MerseyLLB 8,426]

All the realistic efficiencies I can think of would relate to processes and systems - IT and bureaucracy. This would allow each constable to provide more bang for their buck.

I've said it before...i could stomach the loss of a small number of police officer posts if these were then spent on civilian support functions like CJU/casebuilding, civilian investigators for volume crime and safeguarding.

On the latter point, alot of what we do now is based around safeguarding/risk reduction. Alot of time is spent head scratching by police officers as we try to juggle demand and expectations. My old force had a MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub) which was just starting to take effect as I was leaving. They reviewed DASH reports and were at the end of the phone for high risk DA cases able to quickly and easily signpost officers to various support functions/charities. Response officers googling various numbers and ringing round is not an efficient use of time.

Another efficiency that rears its head again is nationalisation of functions such as IT. It is not impossible to create a nationwide system (PNC) once a consensus on working practice and data quality is made. Many forces use COMPACT for Missing persons and Storm for CAD functions. You can easily see the benefits of these systems when you deal with another force who shares the same system- sharing information is a mouse click away. 

People say it cannot be done but (I genuinely don't know the answer) do the Police Scotland legacy force areas still use their native IT systems or have they migrated to one size fits All? 

The Met, which accounts for around 1/4 of all police officers in England and Wales, doesn't run wholly different systems borough by borough so with a little top down directive national systems could come to fruition.

We already work off of collaborative vehicle and uniform procurement policies so efficiencies are already being realised here.

With the advent of the PCCs taking on fire brigade functions and HMIC taking on fire brigade also...going forward it would make sense to me for estates strategy to lean towards collaboration here as well with the notable exception being specialist training venues as obviously many of these will have unique requirements. Taking that to a logical conclusion the ambulance service would be another key partner to bring aboard as their estates requirement is probably the easiest of all to fit in with the other two...their requirements for an ambulance station are quite easy to satisfy. My old Nick was built in a 'new town' in a town centre plot. A few years back you had on the same site, but under separate management, police fire ambo and the magistrates court. This was really handy and we fostered a pretty good working relationship because of this. There is no reason that it couldn't have been a joint site with obvious savings in estates management. 

I wonder also if, as I have again mentioned before, HR/PAYROLL/RECRUITMENT needs to be replicated 42 times nationally. In BTP the HR team moved to Manchester and it didn't stop me getting paid on time. As for recruitment if standards are national there's no reason IMO that regionalised recruitment and basic training could not be delivered for considerably less. No-one has ever explained to me why Centrex was got rid of. There is no business reason why 42 forces could provide a function cheaper than looking their resources.