Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 382)
TUESDAY 26 OCTOBER 2004
MS HAZEL
BLEARS MP AND
MR STEPHEN
RIMMER
Q380 Mr Singh: The HMIC concluded
that call handling will be a weakness for the police. What is
wrong with the way the police currently handle calls?
Ms Blears: This is a really important
area to highlight, and this is a big driver behind what will be
a big theme of our White Paper, around customer service culture,
responsiveness, call handling. A lot of dissatisfaction of the
public depends on that very first encounter when they contact
the police; and if that is a bad experience, that translates into
what they feel about the police service as a whole. Therefore,
getting minimum standards around what people can expect—and
hopefully better than minimum standards—that that is the
least you can expect in terms of the way you are dealt with, the
nature of the first contact, the feedback you get, how calls are
graded, the response to emergency calls and the response to non-emergency
calls. We said in the five-year plan that we want to see the introduction
of a single non-emergency number that perhaps gives you access
to a wider range of services than simply the police service. All
those issues around call handling go to the heart of what people
really want out of their police service. A couple of our forces
have been doing some good projects. In Staffordshire they have
looked at their 400 top users, regulars who use their services,
and they have looked at what are the important issues to them.
Just by some small changes, they have increased satisfaction enormously.
People want somebody on the other end of the phone who can deal
with their problem, as opposed to being pushed from pillar to
post—a simple issue like that, or promising to come within
a certain time, even if you cannot come straight away, saying,
"I am not coming straight away but I will come within this
time", and doing it. That has a huge effect on people. Lancashire
are doing a similar kind of thing. It is a very important area
for us.
Q381 Mr Singh: Is that the basis
for what the Home Secretary has called the "Copper's Contract"?
Ms Blears: Very much so. This
is about people at local level knowing how they can contact, what
the response will be. In North Wales on Friday they launched a
website, and if you put in your postcode, what pops up on the
website is a picture of your beat officer, together with his or
her e-mail address, and mobile phone number. You can immediately
contact them. That is just fantastic and exactly the kind of thing
we want to see up and down the country—who your officers
are, how you contact them, how they get back to you—with
some proper standards about the nature of your relationship with
the police service.
Q382 Mr Singh: I understand HMIC
are doing automatic inspection of call handling. Does the Copper's
Contract not pre-empt the conclusions of that inspection?
Ms Blears: They will feed into
each other because we have said that we want to develop the standards
over the next few years, because clearly there will be a lead-in
time to develop these. The Police Standards Unit is also looking
at some work around best practice in these areas. Again, it is
the usual story, that some forces are doing very well, but it
is not across the board. As we develop those standards—we
have said they will come into effect in November 2006, and all
of that thematic work and the Standards Unit work will feed into
that. At the end of the day, hopefully we will get some standards
that, again, instead of just being imposed from the centre, are
owned by the forces because they think it is important to be accountable
to their communities out there.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
Minister.
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