Annex
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR POLICING EXCELLENCE
1. INCEPTION
AND EARLY
DAYS
1.1. NCPE was born of a desire in the initial
stages of police modernisation to achieve both national minimum
standards in critical areas of policing and the discovery of the
best evidence based practice. ACPO, APA and the Home Office were
in common accord with the ends. Government determined that a national
centre should be set up which would be "hosted" by Centrex
and would amalgamate the functions of the National Crime and Operations
Faculty (NCOF—already managed by Centrex) with newly funded
development for the formulation of guidance and codes referred
to in the Reform Act. ACPO was concerned that operational support
and operational policy should not be within the control of the
Service training arm and that such an arrangement would be wrong
in principle. In practice this dilemma has been managed by agreeing
an external commissioning process involving the tripartite interests
of ACPO, APA and the Home Office and a signing off process which
requires the professional endorsement of the Service as to the
products. This is broadly in line with the legislation which requires
codes to be signed by the Home Secretary after consultation with
ACPO and APA whilst the Police Reform "White Paper"
set out the role of formal guidance which would be signed off
by ACPO with the concurrence of the Home Department. The commissioning
process is supervised by an NCPE Programme Board composed of Home
Office, ACPO, APA and HMIC, which also monitors progress and is
the channel for signing off work. The Programme Board represents
a balancing interest between the training focus of Centrex and
the wider operational context of NCPE.
1.2 The early months of NCPE development
saw only faltering progress. Without an established administration
and unable to obtain suitable accommodation, NCPE could not recruit
suitable staff and much time and effort was spent in trying to
define lines of accountability within Centrex. The continued failure
to resolve the issue of permanent accommodation has made progress
difficult. Original plans based upon the assumption that the existing
investment in NCOF plus the growth vouchsafed by the Spending
Review 2002 proved unsound as Centrex wrestled with massive cuts
in its base budget. It is hoped that the present apportionment
of NCPE funding plus the last round of growth will be protected
in the coming financial year, in which case there will be sufficient
to maintain a lean but effective capability. It is hoped that
the accommodation issue will be resolved before 1 April next with
a financial commitment from Centrex within the revenue budget.
NCPE has made an explicit assumption approved by Centrex and its
Board that the permanent location will be at or near the present
site without which it would be impossible to recruit at all.
2. THE EVOLUTION
OF DOCTRINE
2.1 If advice is to be authoritative it
must be backed by sound research, be well constructed and credibly
provenanced. A commissioning process including testing and consultation
is a necessary, not merely desirable, condition. Equally an eclectic
collection of best practice ideas offers only marginal gains,
the real prospect is for a connected set of ideas around an established
corpus of knowledge built on solid architectural principles.
2.2 The concept of doctrine is at is simplest
what "practitioners should do". Doctrine is not intended
to be doctrinaire and is always capable of circumstantial interpretation.
It continues to develop and is intended to provide a basis for
a sound approach which should not be departed from without good
reason.
2.3 In agreement with ACPO and the Home
Office, NCPE has determined there should be 3 levels of doctrine:
that which is codified and has statutory endorsement; that which
is officially badged as guidance having Home Office concurrence
and against which Forces will be inspected by HMIC; and lastly
practice advice which is evidence based good practice not presently
mandated.
2.4 The Doctrine Division of NCPE has evolved
a series of processes based upon clear project management, active
consultation, house style formulation and disciplines around terminology
and structure. Now we have a "method", future work should
be more easily accomplished.
2.5 Whilst the initial work programme was
around matters of pressing significance NCPE has sought to bring
a structure to doctrine development, as earlier intimated, so
as to avoid the present proliferation of policy. The aim is to
simplify and to re-use component parts within a general operating
structure rather than provide a stream of esoteric products. This
has led NCPE to the concept of "cornerstone doctrine"
which is about defining core processes into which more particular
activities will be engineered. The current business plan is constructed
to this purpose. Within the compass of what is possible given
our resources and reflecting our present commitments we have determined
upon four key delivery areas as follows:
3. INVESTIGATION3.1 To
improve and professionalize the general capability of the police
service to investigate. If this process is successful we should
anticipate less criticism of police evidence, higher public satisfaction,
more effective prosecution and a closing of the "justice
gap". The components within the ambit of the investigations
programme are:
— The formulation of a substantive
investigative doctrine (with key subsidiary doctrine around search,
interviews and forensics).
— The design and provision of a crime
management process.
— The design and management of a suite
of training programmes that support the career model.
— The delivery of some key areas of
training particularly around major crime investigation.
— The development of forensical skills
and doctrine.
— The delivery of the Professionalizing
Investigation Programme (PIP) across the service.
4. INTELLIGENCE
4.1 The continuation of the implementation
of the NIM programme. Within the domain of intelligence which
is the continuing substantiation of operational business processes;
the development of a clear doctrine; and the design of a suite
of training products to support intelligence specialists. Also,
within the "career pathways" programme, to develop a
career strategy for intelligence operatives. In particular the
NIM programme will now pick up the "Bichard" recommendation
requiring NCPE to develop codes and guidance around data capture
and use for intelligence purposes.
5. CRITICAL INCIDENTS
5.1 The third essential pillar is the development
of the service capability to deal with critical incidents. To
support this objective we will deliver the Police National Mobilisation
Plan; guidance and codes on risk areas of policing; and operational
support to major and radical incidents. We also wish to extend
our capability to debrief and learn from testing experiences.
The implementation of the SCAS guidance and the arrival of the
ViSOR database set a need for SCAS to re-think our approach focusing
more on offender identification and managing a greater volume
of submissions.
6. REASSURANCE
AND SOCIAL
COHESION
6.1 The promulgation of an effective set
of options coherent around "reassurance" and "social
cohesion" which will sustain public confidence, address crime
prevention through problem solving techniques and be complementary
to other policing duties. This area will also focus upon inter-agency
co-operation and information sharing.
6.2 There is an integration between these
four cornerstone policing tasks. If the service is able to investigate
efficiently; if it is able to make best use of information and
focus its energies on the most relevant problems through the proper
use of intelligence; if it is able to manage those critical incidents
upon which reputation and confidence so depend; and if we can
achieve a balanced process of policing that incorporates a realistic
approach to crime reduction—the service will obtain substantive
gains in all those areas which the "national policing plan"
has described. There is a further elegance to this architecture
in that it is a balanced alternative to what Assistant Commissioner
Tim Godwin has described as the persistent development cycle of
police forces as they switch from law enforcement to communitaire
solutions and back again.
6.3 We have the potential to develop an
integrated approach to policing which maximises the outcomes of
processes which have traditionally been viewed as in competition
with each other.
7. THE IMPLICATIONS
OF DOCTRINE
7.1 There is little point in producing doctrine
unless it is complied with. Our experience and that of HMIC is
that where there is non-compliance it is more often a consequence
of poor communication rather than churlishness. Equally, at a
product level, nothing does more to achieve conformity and national
standards than common technologies and common training programmes.
Every piece of doctrine generates a response in terms of information
technology; a likely training requirement; and a need for active
implementation.
7.2 The lessons learned from the implementation
of NIM, which was itself a commitment of the early modernisation
programme, were that compliance would only be achieved through
a dedicated implementation team visiting all Forces; assisting
in the benchmarking of existing standards; agreeing an implementation
plan with a Force Champion and subsequent milestone reviews. This
process should be followed by HMIC inspections against the national
minimum standards. NCPE has struggled within its budget to build
an Implementation Team sufficient to this undertaking. To this
end the Home Office have been supportive in deploying the funds
from the NIM Implementation Team and ACPO has separately levied
Forces to assist in the specific area of firearms code implementation,
which helps, but structural under-investment is a problem. The
lack of a process for enshrining guidance in operational environments
has been a persistent barrier to professionalization.
7.3 The present lack of capacity in NCPE
and in Centrex for the development of new training products is
a further real limitation and a matter of concern.
8. THE PRESENT
AGENDA
8.1 In brief, the current work of each of
the four divisions of NCPE is as follows:—
— Specialist Training—in accordance
with ACPO and Home Office intentions NCPE has taken effective
ownership of the Professionalising Investigation Programme which
will provide investigative training for all levels of police activity.
Some of this training will be fed into foundation courses, some
through existing detective training establishments and some will
be delivered directly. Whilst there is considerable existing material
it is being reconstructed to take account of new investigative
theory and to provide more effective learning methods. This is
a major programme which is currently inadequately supported.
8.2 Existing training facilities within
NCPE for specialist covert training at Wyboston and forensical
skills at Durham will be sustained and expanded and for budgetary
reasons we are working hard to establish them on a cost recovery
basis. Lastly there is a pressing need to provide a suite of training
products for intelligence specialists. NIM is at the heart of
police business but the training of intelligence managers, analysts,
field operators and assessors is piecemeal and inadequate. With
very limited resources we are seeking to put key training in place
and it is hoped that delivery against critical roles might begin
towards the end of the year.
8.3 The specialist training wing of NCPE
is worth special mention. The virtues of the close link to doctrine,
operational support and implementation provide a strong justification
of the present structure of NCPE. First, in the specialist areas
of covert operations, national standards are An effective necessity.
Second the operating conditions around the law and technology
are volatile and practice development and training are intertwined.
This is equally so in relation to intelligence and investigative
training. Third, what we learn of operational support at the acute
end of the business can be rapidly fed back. Fourth, we can use
our "expert" staff on the policy and operational side
in support of the training effort.
8.4 In short, in this highly adaptive area
of police business, there is a beneficial symbiotic relationship
between all the functions of NCPE. Indeed the Operational Support
functions and the help desk actively sustain our "trainees"
in the field.
— Implementation Team—During
the current year we will seek to implement three programmes: compliance
with the firearms code and training requirements; implementation
of guidance on the three risk areas of domestic violence, child
abuse and missing persons and the commencement of the implementation
of the Professionalising Investigation Programme. We will also
continue NIM development focusing on specialist skills and level
2 capability.
— Doctrine—the attached schedule
supplies the current programme and the emerging commissions—in
particular NCPE is required to produce a code in relation to the
recommendations of Sir Michael Bichard.
— Operational support continues to
give technical and if necessary on-site support to unusual major
crimes and other critical incidents. In the current year we are
seeking to develop a more comprehensive range of advice around
dangerous offenders; to create a help desk responding to queries
on covert operations, major crime and critical incidents; and
to provide a national expert response to homicide investigation.
Whilst we do some debriefing of operations (like Soham) we see
the need to do more to learn lessons but currently are not staffed
to tackle the issue properly.
9. THE VISION
9.1 NCPE is now confident that its internal
administrative arrangements are fit for purpose and that it has
developed the project management skills and the business processes
to deliver according to the commissions set by the NCPE Programme
Board. The development of critical cornerstone doctrine around
investigations, intelligence, critical incident management and
neighbourhood policing will begin to provide a more integrated
policy framework. More fundamentally they are the stepping stones
to a professional service in the real sense of the term—ethical,
knowledge-based and qualified.
9.2 There are exciting new opportunities.
We have not exploited "science" as we might. Expanding
law enforcement into new areas of offender management; designing
multi-agency programmes (as against mere expressions of mutual
intent); aligning investigative strategy with prosecution strategy
(which is presently alarmingly disconnected); better understanding
the conducive factors to crime and disorder; revealing the organisational
and market dimensions of level 2 criminality and developing better
control strategies; and much more, are all on our radar.
29 July 2004
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