Valuing the Police

1. Valuing the Police Andrew Ford Director, Valuing the Police Programme HMIC Wednesday 6 November 2010

2. Overview • Financial context • Changing landscape • HMIC’s recent work • What we found • Outsourcing • HMIC current and future work

3. Changing financial context

4. Changing landscape • Recently formed Coalition Government • Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people • Demise of Audit Commission, NPIA and others • Formation of National Crime Agency • Uncertain performance management regime • A lighter touch required from regulators

5. Recent HMIC work • Pilots conducted in 4 forces – March to May 2010 • Used management information with five days fieldwork • Checked availability of some visible resources across all forces • Checked plans and preparedness across all forces and police authorities • Development of Valuing the Police (VtP) inspection approach and methodology, including bringing together Value for Money and Working for the Public inspections • Pilot work informed “Valuing the Police: Policing in an age of austerity”

6. Reference groups • Sector (ACPO, APA, Home Office, Audit Commission) • Non-sector (Deloitte, Alix Partners, BBC, BT, local authorities and others) • UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community (RISC) • NPIA, ACPO and HMIC alignment work

7. What we found - the public’s view • VfM means that the police are effective (rather than everything is done at the lowest cost) • By effective, this means cutting crime and ASB through visibility and dealing with criminals • VfM to the public means: • “Visible policing presence” • “When they are around crime does not happen” • “It is not about cost but whether they are effective”

8. Whatwe found – leadership/capability • Police service has got better whilst getting bigger but level of cuts unprecedented in working lives of senior managers • Step change needed in leadership’s preparedness to face challenges – smaller status quo not good enough • Preparedness: • only 8 forces considered themselves well prepared for scale of cuts they predicted • plans patchy and little scenario planning or activity • Pace of action: not responded to emerging financial position (White Paper, collaboration)

9. What we found - cost control • VfM profiles and POA data show variation in costs well in excess of £1bn • Staff availability not always aligned with public priorities: • growth of specialisation • shift patterns (11% availability) • risk aversion, bureaucracy and specification burden • resource management and alignment historically based • VfM equals “come in on budget”

10. What we found – system thinking • Central constraints over local priorities • Absence of comparative financial information • Priority of accounting over leveraging resources - VfM not incentivised • Risk averse • Uncertainty over scale of cuts • Leadership of business change • Limited searching for good practice or benchmarking • Interoperability

11. What is needed – re-design • Significant opportunities to cut costs and improve availability through re-design of policing: • relentless drive to challenge all spending • prioritisation of police availability for the public • local leadership of reform, taking decisive action to bridge gap • new architecture with central government and sector working together to cut identified constraints • Government thinking carefully about distribution of cuts

12. Re-design: outsourcing • Outsourcing is at forefront of Government and Treasury’s mind: • rumour of view that 50 – 60 per cent of police spend could be outsourced • private sector offer of £1bn + saving in police IT • No evidence of strategic approach across police service or wider public sector • Often driven by public sector organisations’ lack of capital or desire to shift a problem • Challenge is to move away from tactical approach to outsourcing

13. Re-design: outsourcing • Private sector involvement generally restricted to back office and infra-structure: • police radio network, air support, fleet, IT and HQs • SW1 joint venture between one police force, local authority and IBM includes procurement • Cleveland with Steria which includes call handling and criminal justice along with business support and IT • Outsourcing needs to be part of business model and go beyond back office and infra-structure

14. HMIC Valuing the Police work • VFM profiles • Police Authority Inspections • Productivity • Preparedness

15. Current work - productivitystudies • Defining productivity (pragmatic) • Comparative productivity: • what are the police doing? • force level productivity (‘customer journey’) • detailed analysis of productivity in one area -community policing (neighbourhoods, response and roads policing

16. Current work - productivitystudies • Expanding availability work to cover a wider range of functions and all 43 forces: • simplified availability funnels for 4 key times • local uniform, Level1 investigations, intelligence and tactical firearms • Shift systems, including use of resource planning tools: • drivers for shift systems • use of Ximes and similar software • key considerations when selecting shift patterns

17. Current work - productivitystudies Methodology: • light touch • existing data, focus groups and some field work • questionnaire to forces October 2010 • trial with five forces just completed • Productivity thematic in November or December 2010

18. Current work - preparedness • Inspect police force/authority plans for the CSR period • Draw on VtP pilot inspections for methodology • Short inspections of all 43 between Jan and early March 2011 • Immediate feedback • Thematic June 2011 • Considering how to make results available to the public • Inspect progress with plans in Autumn 2011 • Further preparedness inspections 2012 during transition to Police and Crime Commissioners

19. Questions