Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
27 OCTOBER 2004
Chief Constable Barbara Wilding, and Mr Paul Wade
Q100 Mrs Williams: Good afternoon.
Chief Constable Wilding: Good
afternoon.
Q101 Mrs Williams: Could I ask you what
are the main drivers in determining policing priorities in South
Wales? In your introduction you mentioned a few issues. Could
you tell us, are there any differences in drivers of priorities
amongst the Basic Command Units (BCUs) within the force and are
there any tensions or, indeed, conflicts between the force and
the local level on the one hand, and the force on national level
on the other?
Chief Constable Wilding: The main
drivers, it is quite a sophisticated way. We now do what we call
a "strategic assessment" of the force, of the issues
affecting the force. That has been completed. We look at it every
six months as well to see if that should be changed. That tends
to tell us what are the issues now but what are the emerging issues
as well. We engage in a tremendous amount of consultation with
the public. In fact, last year we sent out 25,000 surveys to members
of the public. We engage with our victims. Last year also we held
focus groups with the hard to reach groups in order that we could
establish what were the issues for them. The Police Authority
engage in a considerable amount of consultation to find out what
are the issues for the local people. Within each BCU there will
be different issues, and, therefore, the BCU plan is put together
taking account of those issues that we at the centre have pulled
together and aggregated up. They are corporate issues, and the
BCU can also add on to that plan the issues that have come out
from the local consultation as well. So there are differences,
there are bound to be differences, because they police different
areas with different concerns, but there are no differences in
terms of the corporate part of it. Looking now at the national
plan, the national plan has hitherto been quite narrow and originally
was just focused on burglary, violent crime and auto crimes. It
was very narrow, very crime focused, which was great if you lived
in an area where they were issues, but where perhaps they were
not issues, it meant that we were probably putting our resources
more towards those issues that were measured over than perhaps
with the local concerns. I am very glad to say that now that is
changing; that national plan is becoming broader now and also
it is becoming the area that we wanted to focus on, which has
been anti-social behaviour and looking at customer focus; and
I am delighted; I think that is a great move for the future. The
tension between the national plan, therefore, I think was mainly
historical, and I am hoping, I do hope for the future with this
greater range and the way in which we are being measured in a
number of other domains now it more reflects a greater range of
police work rather than a narrow range which did deflect us under
the past.
Q102 Mrs Williams: What about Community
Safety Partnerships?
Chief Constable Wilding: I am
going to ask Mr Francis to answer a question on Community Safety
Partnerships, because that is his side of the business, and he
will give you all the insight into that.
Assistant Chief Constable Francis:
Community Safety Partnership is extremely important to the people
of South Wales. When one looks at the problems that our communities
face, it is very rare that any one agency can actually solve the
problems. When one looks at the social and economic problems,
employment, education, health, they tend to often be at the heart
of the complaints and the problems that are troubling communities.
For the police to try and do anything on their own I think would
be crass in this day and age. Working with the community safety
partners, with the local authority having a key role there, but
other partners also having key roles, must be the way that we
can do the best in terms of local service to the public.
Q103 Mrs Williams: You did not mention
anything about the national intelligence model.
Chief Constable Wilding: In terms
of community safety partners?
Q104 Mrs Williams: Would you like to
comment on that?
Chief Constable Wilding: Indeed.
The national intelligence model is a model that was mandated pretty
much about two/three years ago now. The force is compliant in
each of the areas in relation to the national intelligence model,
and that mainly has been focused on crime in gathering intelligence
on crime and then finding the hotspots, all those sorts of things,
and being able to tackle and put the resources into where the
hotspots are and to work with our partners in designing out crime
in those areas. Within the Community Safety Partnership there
is a tremendous amount of intelligence on community issues, which
at the moment we are only exploring how we can exchange that intelligence,
how we bring it together, in order that we can have an assessment
of community intelligence so that we can be all gauged towards
doing the right thing in the right place at the right time and
our efforts towards that. We started that in Rhondda Cynon Taff.
They have chosen four areas to pool all their intelligence over,
the agencies. We have got over the confidentiality issues. I have
to say that the Bichard Inquiry was a great encouragement in that
area, and we are working with the Information Commissioners as
well to make sure everybody is comfortable in sharing their intelligence.
It is going into the partnership, which is a very wide partnership,
I have to say there, and the four areas are: anti-social behaviour,
juvenile offending, domestic violence, there is another area which
escapes me at the moment—I am sorry, I cannot remember what
the fourth area is—and they are now pooling that intelligence.
They have employed an analyst, and, for the first time, we are
going to have good community intelligence which will fall into
the national intelligence model and which will help the Community
Safety Partnerships work together in what . . . Apparently it
is child protection. I beg your pardon. So that will help them
formulate their plans and to see where they get their best return
for their efforts.
Q105 Mrs Williams: You note in paragraph
3.2, "Local police activity was often prioritised with national
targets in mind and sometimes at the expense of more local concern.
A requirement to meet national targets has sometimes skewed policing
resources away from lower level public nuisance issues."
Could you tell us, first of all, are all NPP targets appropriate
to your force and to what extent do you have to cut back on services
you would like to implement because of national imperatives, and
what level of resources have been realigned to meet nationally
set targets away from local needs and neighbourhood policing?
Chief Constable Wilding: As I
said earlier, the policing plan has hitherto been very narrow.
Therefore, we are judged by being a family of forces. We are measured
through being in this family of forces. There are eight in the
family and clearly nobody wants to be at the bottom of the pile
being measured. So we do put resources towards what have been
the national priorities. It is a fact, therefore, that we have
not always been able to invest the same sort of resource in those
issues that have affected local people, and that has been a historic
case. What we are looking at now is that the National Policing
Plan is changing and that we are going to be measured against
a range of other measures, which include customer focus, customer
satisfaction and the quality of service we give people, not just
the quantitative terms but the quality of service. We are going
to be measured against that, which means that . . . We had a planning
meeting last week with my chief officer team for two days to look
at the plans for next year. For the first time I am sending a
very strong message out to the force to say, "Yes, crime
has been very important and everyone has been very successful."
At the moment crime in South Wales Police for the first five months
of this year is down by nearly 10%—they have been very successful—but
what we need to do now is to make sure it is a quality service
that they receive as well. So we are going to invest in resources
next year, a tremendous number of resources, in providing that
quality of service on both counts. The BCUs are measured amongst
their family of BCUs, and I am sending a message out to them to
say, "You will be measured in both of these areas in how
you manage crime and how you will manage the response to customer
focus." It will be tricky for them, and it is a balancing
act, but they are good people. We give them support, we give them
training and, frankly, they would not be doing the job if we did
not think that they could manage that juggling act. Hitherto there
have been tensions, I suspect there will be still be some tensions
between the two plans, but I do have some hope for the future,
that it is getting broader and it is more focused in what the
public want.
Q106 Mrs Williams: You have mentioned
it briefly, but if you did not have national targets, what exactly
would you do differently? Which areas would you prioritise, for
instance?
Chief Constable Wilding: Again
the model, the national intelligence model, clearly tells us which
areas we have to be concerned on through the strategic assessment
that is done of the force, and next week you are visiting my force
area, I can allow you to see a copy of it, which might be of interest
to you. In Wales, as a matter of interest, each force has done
its assessment now, and we have put that together in a Wales assessment
as well which drives our Tarian. What are the mere crime issues?
We are now wanting to extend to it to what are the community issues
as well. So that will tell us where we have to focus some of our
resources, but, we must never forget, the local people will tell
us what they want to focus on. What would I focus on differently?
Had I been sitting here a year ago, I would be telling you very
firmly I wanted to focus on what mattered to the local people,
and I would want to come up with a policing structure that would
allow me to deliver that, and that comes down to a modernised
workforce really. I could give you lots of examples where it has
been my extended police family who have done things within communities
that have made people's lives so much better, and some of them
such simple things, where people were perhaps unthinking about
their neighbours and uncaring, but, the moment it has been brought
to their attention, things have stopped. So I would like to commit
those resources to the front line. I am doing that now knowing
that I am not going to be beaten up in the press, because my resources
have not all been targeted at crime. I am doing it now because
I know the National Police Plan is changing to accommodate that.
I have to say, the timing of the publication of the plan is not
helpful; it is coming out in November. We have started our consultation
process already. We have to start thinking about the budgetary
process, what we can afford to do, and in our force we have decided
to ask to look how we can reshape the force—that is not
to cut anything, but how we can reshape the force to move resources,
more resources, into our community focus.
Q107 Mrs Williams: Would you, therefore,
say that the national intelligence model and the police performance
assessments hinder rather than help the police in providing services
based on local needs?
Chief Constable Wilding: No, it
helps. By extending into the community intelligence, it will help
even more. I am convinced of it.
Q108 Mr Evans: Good afternoon. Looking
at anti-social behaviour and the ASBOs, you can see in your submission
that it has a disproportionate effect on the quality of people's
lives and you get your defence in early on and, say, "Perhaps
the low level or low number of ASBOs is because our strategy is
working". Put that to one side for a second. Looking at the
figures of the number of ASBOs that were given between 1 January
2003 and 1 September 2004, that is a 20-month period, I have worked
out there are 69 in total. So that is just over three a month.
In some areas like Swansea, only three were given during that
20-month period. I come from Swansea and, I have to say, I am
staggered at that figure, that it is not much higher. Even in
Cardiff it is only 24; in other areas, like the Vale of Glamorgan
only three; in Bridgend two. That is in a 20-month period. Are
you happy that those who deserve the ASBOs are getting them?
Chief Constable Wilding: If I
was to look at those figures as the single indicator, I would
be deeply unhappy, and I would not want to be sitting here before
you in that position, frankly; but the position I come from is
something totally different. I would like to put the context.
I know we have not got a lot of time this afternoon, but this
is really important. Our framework has been acknowledged as being
National Best Practice, our anti-social behaviour framework has
been acknowledged as being National Best Practice. Last week the
Chair of the Youth Justice Board commended it as National Best
Practice and commended my approach to anti-social behaviour in
the round, not just in ASBOs, resulting in an ASBO, as indeed
did the HMI, when they have done, this year, two base-line assessments
on two of our divisions, one of which was Swansea, and have said
how the early intervention programme is demonstrably assisting
young people and aiding others in their quality of life. So I
feel quite confident in saying to you I commend our framework—I
believe it is working—and I am going to hand you over to
Mr Francis who has some interesting statistics that shows you
it in the round rather than in the singular.
Assistant Chief Constable Francis:
We are proud of the framework. It is one of the best structured.
If I could just say, the Swansea BCU is one of the better performing
and one of the more progressive partnerships in dealing with anti-social
behaviour; but the figure of 69, that stark figure, does not actually
reflect them when you look at the framework that we have, which
is a staged framework, steps one, two, three, four, and we can
always jump those in extreme cases, but in that period 3,000 stage-one
letters were issued, 500 stage-two letters and visits, 43 stage-three
visits and 75 acceptable behaviour contracts; and the point that
the Chief was making was that with all those figures behind that,
and you see the drop off from the 3,000, the early intervention,
the confronting the young people, meeting with their parents,
explaining the impact and explaining consequences, we would feel
that taking that approach, the preventative early intervention
approach, is very important indeed, and the 69, you could strongly
argue, is a reflection of success in taking that proactive approach
at an early stage.
Q109 Mr Evans: Do you think that is what
the public in Swansea feel when people who live in certain areas
will know the persistent young thugs and yobs that make their
life an absolute misery? How do you think they feel when they
find out that little Johnny, the thug down the road, has just
received a letter to tell him to behave better? Are you taking
the public with you on this, because whenever I go back to Swansea
and I read the South Wales Evening Post, it does not seem as if
everything is peaceful on the streets, to be honest?
Chief Constable Wilding: No. I
could make many comments about media, but this is probably not
the place for it, having been misquoted on many occasions, and
I am sure you have been in the same position. What I say about
little Johnny on the street, if little Johnny on the street is
a thug and we do not know about it we are failing. We have in
the force area leaflets throughout the force area at strategic
locations where the public go, libraries, etcetera, where if they
wish to put in any information regarding somebody who is causing
anti-social behaviour of any kind, they can do so. Because of
our structure that then goes into the local Anti-social Behaviour
Unit, there is a database in those units that is added to and
it is in constant withdrawal to see how this is being aggregated
upwards. The anti-social behaviour orders, the letter that you
talk about, I think to know that they have just received a letter—is
it not important that the behaviour has stopped? That is the important
thing, surely. The fact that little Johnny down the road has been
causing a nuisance but has received a letter and the behaviour
has stopped, surely that has worked. We monitor the displacement
end, and there is very little displacement; but if it does not
stop, then they get the second letter and they get a visit as
well, and then there is intervention to see what can we do with
this person. It is not all young people that cause anti-social
behaviour. We often quite glibly talk about little Johnny, but
we should remember that we are quick to criticise young people
but we are very slow to congratulate them.
Q110 Mr Evans: And his big brother is
worrying too.
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes;
quite.
Q111 Mr Evans: Bigger Johnny.
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes.
Q112 Mr Evans: I appreciate all of that.
It is taking the public with you really, which is part of your
partnership that is there?
Chief Constable Wilding: It is.
Mr Evans: Is there as part of your strategy
an opportunity for the people of Swansea, for instance—and
I pick on Swansea because it is the area I know really well—if
they are unhappy with your what you are doing—they hear
he has been sent a letter and then he gets another letter and
it is still there—do they get an opportunity to—is
there a dialogue that is established between the complainant and
yourselves as to when they say, "Listen, my life is hell
now. This person needs an anti-social behaviour order"?
Q113 Chairman: Would you like to answer
that question before I call the committee to order.
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes.
I will be very quick. I would say I have never had any letters
of complaint of that accord. I go out a tremendous amount and
I have been to the areas of high crime and depressed areas. People
come up to me and say, "They are all away. They have gone.
It has stopped", and I have been out into the Swansea area
as well and I have never had people come up to me and say, "It
does not work. Your process does not work." The fact is,
we could skip any stage of the process if it seems that people
are not listening to what is happening and they are not acting
by it.
Chairman: I am afraid we have a division
in the House so I am going to suspend the sitting for fifteen
minutes.
The Committee suspended at 3.31 p.m. until
3.45 p.m. for a division in the House
Chairman: I understand there might be
another division in 45 minutes, so we will try and get on as fast
as we can, if members would keep their questions as succinct as
possible and, so far as you can, the answers as well.
Q114 Mr Evans: Are you surprised that
I am so cynical about this approach, about the number of ASBOs,
because there is no-one who knows the people of Swansea like I
know them. I would expect them to think that there would be considerably
more over a twenty-month period than just over three a month?
Chief Constable Wilding: I suppose
if you looked at that and said that our calls for anti-social
behaviour, the instances of anti-social behaviour, were running
out of control and we were not doing anything about it, I would
frankly say that, looking at the figures that have gone through
the process, I think they are fairly impressive figure and I think
I that the drop out rate . . . I commend the whole Bill, I really
do commend it, because it allows the interventions at an early
age, and to have such a drop out from 3,000, I think, to 500 tells
you actually, and it is the range of what the behaviour is as
well. If you take anti-social behaviour orders as a sign of success,
then I would say, "Yes, it looks pretty disappointing",
but if you look at it in the round of what we have achieved, let
me just tell you, not coming out of Swansea but not far away in
Bridgend, the Wildmill Estate in Bridgend, by working with the
partnership there—it is not a Community First area but it
was a very depressed high crime area, and we put in three PCSOs
and 500 hours'worth of Specials' time and working with our partners
they have introduced quite a lot of youth activity and a youth
worker and took over a shop as a drop-in in fact. The calls to
police for anti-social behaviour went down by over 50%. The recorded
crime as a result of anti-social behaviour went down by 44%. Crime
overall went down by 78%. On that estate they did not have an
ASBO, but they have gone through processes and they were intervening
early on. That has to be the right thing, surely. If you are saying
to me that there are areas of Swansea where people are very concerned
that we are not acting on anti-social behaviour, I have to say
I would be surprised because Swansea has won all sorts of awards
for it attitude towards community work. It is up for national
awards. Indeed, the Chief Superintendent from there, only three
or four weeks ago, won the national award for working with diversity.
It is not a BCU team that is adverse to looking at problems and
dealing with problems, but if you want to measure it just by how
many ASBOs they have got, then, yes, it is a failure, but I certainly
do not see it like that.
Q115 Mr Evans: Maybe it is because of
what you say in your evidence right at the very beginning, that
there is no overall definition of what anti-social behaviour is,
and maybe if there was one that was defined every police force
in the country could judge it by that and, indeed, the person
who is being anti-social and the parents then may also be able
to independently judge as to whether their child or, indeed, somebody
in their family is being completely anti-social. Perhaps you could
say something about how you define anti-social behaviour?
Chief Constable Wilding: It is
a very wide area; it is a very wide, difficult area. What is someone's
tolerance and what is someone else's intolerance is extremely
difficult, frankly. If we were to have a national definition,
I would absolutely want it to be underwritten with some academic
rigor, without any doubt. I would not want a definition that is
so broad that the expectation of the public means we satisfy nobody.
I would simply want it to be—I would want some academic
work done to be able to generate a definition which we could all
sign up to. I have not been primed in division time by the dear
professor, but what I would say is that anti-social behaviour
. . . I am conscious I have to be quick but I think it is important
to state, recently a PCSO said that she had become aware that
a lady who was in her home, who was disabled, only went out once
a week when her friend used to take her out and, if she went very
far, she had to go in a wheelchair, was very distressed by the
fact that the neighbours parked their car outside her house and
that her friend had to park some considerable distance away, which
meant she had to go in the wheelchair and could not just walk
to the car. The PCSO went to the neighbours and said to the neighbours,
"Do you understand?", and they had not understood at
all because their children had now grown up and they had cars,
so the parking lot had extended and they had not understood. They
no longer park there. That could be defined as being anti-social
behaviour, but in actual fact it was somebody just not thinking.
Q116 Mr Evans: I accept that, but the
anti-social bit, most people would judge that as anti-social and,
when it is pointed out, they do something about it. It is when
it is pointed out to somebody and then a tirade of four letters
come about, a completely abusive reaction on behalf of the next-door
neighbour, that, as you know, neighbourly disputes then turn into
disproportionate conflicts that lose all proportion, which is
very sad.
Chief Constable Wilding: We have
a history of work with our partners of moving people, through
housing, because our partners extend to housing within the Community
Safety Partnerships. We have a number now where they are altogether
in one building, all the people are represented in one building.
We are working towards sharing the same IT systems, which is a
little tricky but we are getting there, and we have a history,
we have a proven history of working with our partners of moving
of neighbours, moving off the estates.
Q117 Mr Evans: Is there anything else
you would want to do as far as trying to tackle the anti-social
behaviour that exists? If you were given a complete free rein,
is there something that you would really love to do?
Chief Constable Wilding: When
I was a sergeant in the West End here in the Seventies I got berated
for saying that I actually wished intervention to happen very
early on and that before people become parents they are taught
the parenting skills, and all the rest of it, because I do genuinely
believe it starts in the home. The earlier the better, frankly,
the interventions in the home, to give aspiration in the home
and to make sure there is structure to mature people's lives and
to children's lives. It is not a policing issue, this is our partners'
effort, but I would be willing to lead that effort to get people
to do that, to intervene. In Merthyr Tydfil they are doing some
work, in fact, with single mothers, particularly giving them skills
to get them out of the home and raising their feel-good factor
about themselves. So it is at that end, because I genuinely believe
that is where it starts. The socialising of young people—talk
to any head teachers, junior school teachers—they will tell
you they spend a lot of their formative time in school socialising
the students to talking to each other, not just resorting to violence
and physical attack. Again, that comes round to domestic violence.
I would want to do a lot more with domestic violence, because
it is what people witness in the home behind closed doors; they
then become—there is an awful lot of empirical data which
shows they become victims or they become abusers in the future,
and it is that bit about people not talking to them, not discussing
and having that socialised life, that is where I would like to
put more effort.
Q118 Mr Evans: Are you getting support
from parents?
Chief Constable Wilding: I think
the drop out rate shows you. 3,000 to 500 shows you that when
it is brought to the parents' attention something is done about
it, with little displacement, something has been done.
Q119 Mr Evans: You are also happy with
ASBOs per se as a vehicle for sorting out anti-social behaviour
even when it may happen that a youngster may get sent to prison?
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes,
absolutely?
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