EXAMINATION
OF WITNESSES
(QUESTIONS 20-39)
8 JULY 2003
DR KEVIN
BOND AND
MR STEPHEN
RIMMER
Q20 BOB
RUSSELL: One of the important
things I understand this body is doing is performance measurement.
The Police Reform Agenda makes reference to ensuring that all
staff have high quality terms and conditions. Would you agree
with me that the quality of the accommodation which police officers
have to operate out of—that also includes the civilian support
staff—is a material factor in how that performance is good,
bad or indifferent? Is sufficient being done by your various organisations
to ensure that police officers have the accommodation they need
to perform? I am sure you will agree that capital spending cuts
and maintenance spending cuts are having a detrimental effect
on the police efficiency in this country?
DR
BOND: I understand
and entirely agree with the point you have made in terms of the
importance of fit for purpose accommodation. I myself—as
I am sure you have—have worked in some thoroughly inadequate
accommodation in my times. I think that there is so much research
now that shows that good accommodation—things like a lot
of natural light—step change performance. To give an example,
I know that Greater Manchester Police are well down the line of
replacing 17 of their Basic Command Unit headquarters under a
PFI scheme. A number of forces have done similar investment in
infrastructure. I think the big question I would raise increasingly
in our major cities certainly but to some extent in the rural
areas as well is that technology and demand is changing fairly
quickly. I am far from convinced today that investing for a hundred
years—which was the old way of doing it—of the location
of a police headquarters or a police station is quite the thing
for the future. I think cell blocks and processing centres are
one thing, but the way the transport infrastructure is changing,
the availability now of communications technology—particularly
Airwave as it is coming out into the Police Service—opens
up all sorts of new possibilities that you really have to think
very carefully. However, there is a lot of office accommodation
and retail accommodation where people are and where problems are.
Q21 BOB
RUSSELL: What is the Police Standards
Unit doing? It is one thing to have modern technology, but there
is little point if the officers operating that modern technology
are in crap working conditions—if I can use that phrase.
DR
BOND: Capital
expense is an issue for the Chief Constable. What we would do
is support—as the Metropolitan Police are doing at the moment—analysing
their likely patterns of demand, looking at where they are going
to be in the future and where they need to invest in new premises
and taking, as they are doing, a pretty revolutionary and radical
look in terms of the type of premises they will need for the future
rather than what they needed yesterday. I agree entirely with
what you are saying. Our role, I believe, is to support the police
forces which are looking at that.
Q22 BOB
RUSSELL: Is that also the view
of the Home Office and, if it is, what is the Home Office doing
about it?
MR
RIMMER: The
Home Secretary has made it very clear that he is concerned about
the adequacy of the working environment in a lot of police stations
around the country. As Kevin said, decisions on specific capital
allocation is for chiefs with their police authorities, but the
Home Office has, through the Capital Modernisation Fund in particular,
specifically allocated substantial sums—I cannot give you
the exact amount, but millions of pounds—in the last year
and will be doing so again in the current year, particularly targeted
at police station improvement and in general terms—and I
recognise there are always difficult efficiency judgments to be
made by chiefs—capital expenditure provided in the 2002-03
settlement and in this year has increased. It is a priority for
the Home Secretary and it links with his wider agenda of terms
and conditions for officers and other staff which particularly
included the pay reform deal that was agreed last year which will
lead to over £200 million extra being invested in 2004-05.
Q23 DAVID
WINNICK: Looking at the Police
Standards Unit website, it gives various projects and then it
mentions structured business process re-engineering. Could you
explain to us in English what is structured business process re-engineering?
DR
BOND: Let me
give you an example. The new Chief Constable of Greater Manchester
police, Mike Todd, has been very conscious of the fact that he
has inherited one of the largest forces in the country with some
considerable demands on him. One of the things he has wanted to
do is to look very closely at whether the organisational layout
of the Force, the internal business processes, are right. He feels
there are many improvements that should be undertaken. What we
have done is to work with him to provide him with access to the
performance data to be able to compare Greater Manchester Police
with other similar large forces. Initially we are looking within
the UK because that is the data we have, but we are working up
some benchmarking data internationally, looking at a range of
forces internationally. Once you have looked at UK performance
you will want to look at how that compares internationally. The
truth is that we do not know yet but we are collecting data from
upwards of 30 other forces in different countries to be able to
give an international dimension. However, Mike wants to know what
he has to do for the next few years, which is huge investment
both in the Police Service and for the people of the Greater Manchester
area. We provided a support to him from Accenture who have worked
with us on the Policing Performance Assessment Framework and they
have spent time with the command team in Greater Manchester to
look at what the plans of the command team and the superintendents
of Greater Manchester are, and they have produced a report for
him to help him follow the logic through in looking not only at
historic trends of demand, but how to get a handle on future areas
of policing demand so that he can structure the Force round that.
That is getting the data very much in place before he makes the
commitment to change the way the Force will move forward.
DAVID WINNICK:
That clarifies to some extent what the term means. One might say
that looking at the way it stands on the website—structured
business process re-engineering—that the person responsible
seems to have a grudge against the English language, but I will
not pursue that.
Q24 MR SINGH:
The Police Superintendents' Association say that they are concerned
that the plethora of performance measurement is turning out to
be overwhelming and there is a danger that the Service is becoming
obsessed with statistics. Are you adding to that problem or are
you trying to find a solution to that problem?
DR
BOND: I would
like to think that we are trying to find a solution to it, but
I understand the concern they express. I think policing by nature
is an organisation that is dealing with human intelligence. It
is trying to pull together a whole range of information about
individual wrongdoing and trying to find patterns and out of those
patterns try to deal with the issues. I think we also need to
recognise that the smallest police force in the country is a multi-million
pound business; it just is. It is allocating public money across
a whole range of different demands. You get up to the Metropolitan
Police and it is a global enterprise, two and a half billion or
so with not just the nation's remit but national remits and some
international remits; it is complex. I think it is wholly right
that the chief constables of those organisations—effectively
the chief executives—and their police authorities, as the
employer of the chief executives understand where that money is
going, how it is being spent and with what value. Also, what are
the patterns of policing demands that they are facing and what
they can expect in the future. It is a presumption to assume that
they have that information. In fact, in many areas that information
is lacking. What my organisation has been about in the main last
year is putting into place a set of information sources that allow
chief officers to understand what are the demands in their particular
forces and what choices they have in terms of meeting those demands.
Where we move this year to try to address some of the concerns
of the Superintendents' Association—which I can understand
and partly is fair—is to produce additional data which we
are not able to do which looks not just at the comparison of forces
but the comparative performance of BCU's of which there are about
300 in the country. I think it is pretty important for a superintendent
who is responsible and is the public face of policing in the main.
I do not think that most people know who their chief constable
is, but frankly they will often know who their local superintendent
or chief superintendent of police is, but those people, running
those organisations understand what is happening in like areas,
what is happening, what the patterns of demand are and what new
ways of policing are being undertaken which might be of help to
them. That is where this year's programme is moving and we have
the sources to allow us to do that. We have a lot of examples
now, one of which was the Policing Priority Area, of which you
will have some knowledge in Bradford. That was one of the first
of those where we learned a lot of simple things which are transferable
to other police commanders. We have circulated that to all police
superintendents around the country. Whilst I understand some of
the concerns, I think we can now point to a range of information
sources—not just the data—that they can begin to draw
on to help them improve their performance.
Q25 MR SINGH:
You think they might now change their view from saying that this
statistics gathering is diverting resources from more valuable
work. Do you think they might have a different view now?
DR
BOND: Clearly
they will have their view. My personal view is that there is need
for more preparation in terms of understanding the facts before
the allocation. That fits entirely into the national intelligence
model which is being rolled out across the country, across all
forces and across all BCU's which simply says, get your data sources
together first, sit down, analyse them and allocate your resources
against the priorities you have got. The data we are providing
is part of that process.
Q26 MR SINGH:
You mentioned in a previous answer the role of superintendents
and chief superintendents. You have done a lot of work with Basic
Command Units. Do you see an enhanced role for superintendents
and chief superintendents and a more visible role?
DR
BOND: I do.
As I have said, I think your local superintendent or chief superintendent
is in the main the local face of policing. You can often go further
now and find the local section inspector. There are parts of the
country—Merseyside is one, West Midlands is another—where
the sergeant or the inspector is leading a local team across a
number of local boroughs. That works well, but fundamentally it
is the superintendent or chief superintendent who is working with
the crime and disorder partnership in the locality who is very
much the front end of policing and I think the Home Secretary's
desire to see greater delegation of responsibility to them is
absolutely right. I think the principle of delegation to the lowest
level possible in management terms is absolutely right.
Q27 MR SINGH:
Would you agree that there needs to be more autonomy at that level,
and would that lead to any dilution in terms of a chief constable's
role?
DR
BOND: I think
that is the balance that one needs to be very careful about. If
you go back into the 1950s and 1960s we can remember some of the
problems by having too much delegation and the lack of professional
standards. So long as professional standards are rigidly enforced,
so long as the process of the national intelligence model—which
is ACPO's decision to ensure that throughout policing in England
and Wales they will all work to that—are in place then I
think greater delegation can and should happen. Ultimately the
chief constable reports to his or her police authority and is
responsible for that larger area.
MR
RIMMER: Could
I add something which bears directly on the work that Kevin and
the PSU have done looking in research terms at models of delegation
across the service? I think what still strikes me and others—including
ministers—is the sheer range of models around. There are
still some very centralised forces and some extremely autonomous
BCU's in other forces. I think what the PSU's research shows is
that you actually do need to develop this balance. Some forces
have clearly got it and others have not, and it is not that they
are necessarily at a particular point now and they all need to
move towards more delegation. There is actually quite a variety
of models and I think it is one of the many areas the PSU, in
looking for more consistent application across the Service, has
helpfully pointed the way.
DR
BOND: There
are two pieces of information which I hope you will ask my successor
to come and explain to you in the future. Firstly, we are undertaking
a research study on delegation. Our initial work has shown that
it is not a simple delegation issue, it is an issue of empowerment.
That is a much broader managerial concept. We have developed a
model which is undertaking field testing at the moment looking
around a range of different police forces for different styles
of policing to see what we can learn. Is it, as I said earlier,
a function of the amount of money a police force has? I suspect
it is not. I suspect it is not simply the amount of money, I think
it is a lot more complex than that so we are working that through
and in about 12 months I think we will have some more interesting
insights into that. The second issue that we are working on with
the Association of Chief Police Officers is a major project which
is referred to in my memorandum. It is the reassurance project
being led by Denis O'Connor the Chief Constable of Surrey together
with Tim Godwin an Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan
Police and now bringing in six other forces round the country.
What are the signals that we, as members of the public, pick up
in our community that make us feel safe or make us feel unsafe?
What can we do about that in terms of styles of policing and working
with the partners in communities, for example is graffiti on the
bus shelter something that makes us feel afraid? If so, then let
us get rid of it. What about burnt out cars? We know different
police forces have now found ways of removing them within hours
not weeks which used to be the case. What is it that affects this
whole set of signals that make us feel safe or unsafe and how
can the police—and this, I think is very, very important—take
the lead or a leadership role within this partnership in local
areas to improve that whole sense of what it is that makes us
safe? That is a delegation issue, putting it a different way,
because it is about understanding what is happening in the local
community and empowering the police, together with its partners
in the community, to do something about it. I think that project
over the next two years ought to deliver some very interesting
results. You may be aware of some of the work that is being done
in New York and in Chicago around the broken windows thinking.
This is very much taking it on a generation beyond that.
Q28 MR SINGH:
I very much agree with many of the things you have said there,
but does that not contradict somewhat the number of Home Office
targets and initiatives that are fired down onto forces, restricting
them into a national framework when they need the local flexibility
to deal with local issues just as you mentioned?
DR
BOND: I think
we are in a state of flux. I think the National Policing Plan
for the first time brought together the requirements of the national
government in terms of policing. I think that is a perfectly respectable
thing. I think it adds clarity to the situation before which was
not brought together in one place, and it has allowed chief constables
to bring some planning for the next three years to what they intend
to do. I think what now needs to be done—and the Home Secretary
has indicated this in his Edith Kahn lecture—is to pick
the whole issue of communities up and move that forward. The Association
of Chief Police Officers Reassurance Project, which the Home Secretary
is very aware of and is very supportive of, is about how we now
take the agenda forward and bring in the needs of local communities
and allow exactly what you are looking for, which is this flexibility
around the service to the community within a pattern of standards
of performance nationally which I think is pretty reasonable to
look for.
MR
RIMMER: The
Home Secretary and Hazel Blears (the new policing Minister) are
very clear that there is no intrinsic conflict between setting
some clear national standards in terms of policing to ensure consistency
of provision across the country.
Q29 MR SINGH:
But there is a difference between standards and targets.
MR
RIMMER: I was
going to come on to that and the local flexibilities that Kevin
has talked about. In terms of targets, there is a bit of a myth
about the National Policing Plan, if I may say so, which some
commentators have developed with the notion that it is littered
with priorities and targets. In fact, there are four very clear
priorities within the National Policing Plan. In terms of targets—by
which I mean something that is a quantifiable requirement for
each of the 43 forces—there are essentially two. There is
a third for the 10 street crime forces. There is a list in the
Plan of a range of things which require chief officers to consider
various policy and performance issues in drawing up that plan,
but it is their plan that they produce with their police authority.
As Kevin says, we will learn from the first year's National Policing
Plan and hopefully develop it on the basis of some of the thinking
that has emerged since then. Nonetheless, it would be objectively
unfair to say that it is littered with targets when it is not.
Q30 MR SINGH:
Part of the Police Reform Agenda has been to deal with abuses
or absenteeism, sickness, use of retirement practices. Does the
PSU have a role in that, and if so what is the role and what have
you done?
DR
BOND: We have
a very supporting role. This is something that has fallen very
much more with Stephen in terms of the national regulations and
negotiations, I am pleased to say. My remit has been largely to
understand the performance issues, what practices in performance
are delivering better results and to transfer that. My observation
on a number of these issues that you have mentioned is that chief
constables are taking these matters incredibly seriously now.
The objective reality, when you look at the statistics, is that
10 years ago that was not the case but the current generation
of chief constables is very aware of the cost and the performance
costs of many of these issues and are doing an awful lot to deal
with it.
Q31 MR SINGH:
Looking at your key objectives I was very interested in the reducing
street crime one and the video recognition project. I raise this
because I was with the Bradford Police on Friday going through
the whole riot investigation which is probably the biggest recognition
investigation that has ever happened in the UK—and hopefully
likely to happen—and the problem with recognition is that
it is not covered by the rules of PACE. In a sense the Bradford
police had to start from scratch to develop a system which was
acceptable to the courts and to the appeal court. Do you think
they should be reviewed to include a conduct on recognition and
how far have you got with your project?
DR
BOND: There
are two sides to this, one is video identification which is covered
by PACE. Indeed, the PACE rules were changed last year specifically
to facilitate this and I would like to pay tribute if I may to
West Yorkshire Police because they were working very much on a
system called VIPER (a video identification system) for a number
of years, which we were able to expedite last year around all
the 10 street crime police forces at fast track and begin to build
up what I believe will lead into video recognition or facial feature
recognition—to be more precise—which is the use of
a digital image as one of the databases to identify people who
are guilty of or are suspected of crime. I think there is further
work that needs to be done in terms of the legal structure around
that. Technology is allowing us now to develop some very important
data sets such as the one being built round the automatic number
plate recognition. If we can do the same in terms of facial feature
recognition those are very important technology aids to law enforcement
for the future against some of the more organised and threatening
areas to society.
Q32 DAVID
WINNICK: Dr Bond, you did mention
that this Committee will at some stage be asking questions to
your successor. Can I ask you, if you have no objections, why
you are leaving after such a short period?
DR
BOND: I have
no objections. I am 53 this year.
Q33 DAVID
WINNICK: That is young by many
standards.
DR
BOND: And that
gives me only 17 years to sort my pension out. I had to put my
pension in abeyance when I came to do this job. I think I have
laid the ground for my successor, built a very good team and made
a series of changes. I now need to go and sort other issues out
in terms of pension for the future. It really was a decision as
simple as that. I have enjoyed what I have done. I believe I have
got on rather well with most of the people I have dealt with,
but it is time to go back to business and sort my pension out.
Q34 DAVID
WINNICK: I hope this Committee
would be amongst the category of "most of the people"
you have enjoyed working with. Mr Rimmer, what is the process
for advertising the position?
MR
RIMMER: The
process was launched with an external open competition advertised
a couple of months ago with a detailed job specification that
went along with it. The selection board is meeting this week to
look at short-listed candidates. The timing of an appointment
will depend on any negotiations that may follow from that with
a preferred candidate. The board is chaired by a civil service
commissioner and I am one of the selection panel.
Q35 MR PROSSER:
Dr Bond, whenever I sit down with the Home Secretary he generously
praises the performance of my own Police Force, the Kent Constabulary.
I endorse all he says, but how significant are the differences
between constabularies and how many times have you identified
failing command units or failing forces and taken action to redress
the differences?
DR
BOND: I am not
convinced there is such a thing as a failure in the black and
white sense; I think there are variations in performance. I think
that is a very important issue because I believe from all my management
experience that what you have to do is to encourage people and
help them improve rather than find ways of hitting them round
the ear. From my own schooling I remember that was seldom productive.
I think it is an issue about variations in performance and what
you can do about it. You refer to your own Force, Kent Constabulary.
That Force has a long record of very good performance and I am
able to know that just by opening my papers to look at their record
in terms of what is being happening there. That is the system
that we have put in place that is now available to all forces.
It has not been possible to look at the performance of a police
force or a BCU against its comparators until now. Now we can.
I have a data set which runs from May 2000 to April 2003 so that
allows me to see what has been happening over that time to that
Force's data against its comparators. I am very happy to let the
Committee have samples of these afterwards if you would like that.
What it is really about is that without that data how can any
chief constable make an assessment of its performance against
its peer group. What we are able to do is to see that what we
have is an increase in recorded crime over a period. We have the
National Crime Recording System where ACPO sought to have a better
ethical recording of what is happening across the whole of England
and Wales. They put into place an agreement to do that and the
Home Office amended the recording rules to ensure that it was
undertaken in a common way. We begin to see what is happening
in performance by police forces over time. We are also able to
dig down into that and say what is happening in different forces.
Taking Kent as an example, per 100,000 population what we see
is that robbery has fallen faster than its most similar force
comparators. That is telling us what we also know from other areas
that the recently retired Chief Constable of Kent was very focussed
on dealing with serious criminality. We know that; you know it.
We can and do apply that to other forces. We have established
under Mr Rimmer's chairmanship a group that meets regularly now
where we review the data from all forces. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary
is part of that review process and they bring a dimension to bear
in terms of their intimate knowledge of the force over time. We
are able to identify those areas that need attention. Let me give
you two examples of how that works. I have referred to one already
which was the central Bristol area of Avon and Somerset which
was very, very obviously a major outlier in terms of performance
and when we dug into it we found the issue was a crack cocaine
related problem. A whole host of initiatives were put in place
to support that Police Force and a delivery plan was put together
that has delivered a step change in performance and a large number
of arrests which is fundamentally changing the risk profile of
central Bristol. The second area was in the Metropolitan Police
area in Lambeth. Again we had a major problem developing there
which we were able to pick out statistically. We talked to the
Commissioner of Police. We worked with the Assistant Commissioner
for Territorial Policing, Mr Godwin, and the police in Lambeth
put in place a series of operations that closed down a large number
of crack houses, arrested a very large number of people and had
a significant impact in terms of the safety of people there. Those
are examples of what we are doing and examples of when an outlier
comes up. There are some areas which are more long term. An example
of that—which I know the Chief Constable would not mind
me sharing—is the Greater Manchester police area. Mike Todd
knows that there have been some major issues developing in Manchester.
His whole process has been put to put together a strategy of structuring
the Force to deal with it. We have made available to him all the
data sources that show what has been happening, not just in the
Force area but in other comparative force areas like the West
Midlands police, and then within the Force in data terms in his
BCU's. He has now, with the help of Accenture—who we have
provided financial support to put in there—put together
a performance framework for Greater Manchester police that is
based on the statistical framework that we are building. Those
are examples that are addressing the particular issue that you
raise.
Q36 MR PROSSER:
Those are good examples and very helpful. Could you give us a
view of how many instances where you have recognised performance
below par, intervened and seen a measurable improvement? Would
you be able to tell us that?
DR
BOND: We are
working with 31 forces in a variety of different ways and it ranges
from the Greater Manchester example—which is looking in
a more managerial structural process, business re-engineering
process—down to the example of Lincolnshire where we worked
with them on a specific issue around expediting forensic analysis
which was speeding up the process between an offence happening,
the submission of that sample to the labs, fast-tracking the result
and expediting the arrest of the identified. Within those 31 forces
there is a whole host of interventions undertaken. We have a work
schedule which I am very happy to let you see which identifies
each force and what we are doing.
Q37 MR PROSSER:
You promised us some samples from your listings. Is that document
in the public domain?
DR
BOND: No, not
as yet. It is currently provided for police forces and we are
working on a process by which we can look at if it were to be
made public how it would be made available.
Q38 BOB
RUSSELL: It is not sexed-up at
all, is it?
DR
BOND: Far be
it from me to make any comment on that.
Q39 MR PROSSER:
Would you welcome the publication in some sort of condensed format?
DR
BOND: I would
welcome that. Let me point out that we have now established through
the monitors that were published in February what we can do at
force level—that is a baseline publication; there will be
a further publication early this autumn to show changes one year
against another. How much further data and how it is made available
is something we now have to work through.
MR
RIMMER: It is
worth saying that the Home Secretary is taking an increasingly
clear view that it is important to get this comparative data disseminated,
properly available on the website and other means, not only to
enable forces and police authorities to assess how their performance
is doing but also to enable the public to get a sense of how their
local policing really is performing and he has given us strong
encouragement to bring this process forward from what was, at
the start of this year, quite a big leap into the unknown when
the first set of monitors that Kevin referred to was published.
DR
BOND: We think
it will be the autumn before we have an internet browser capacity
but we are working on it.
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