Written evidence from North Wales Police
is printed on Page Ev 224
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 152-159)
3 NOVEMBER 2004
Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, and Inspector
Paul Firth
Q152 Chairman: Welcome, Chief Constable
and Inspector. I know who you are, of course, very well, but if
you could, for the record, introduce yourselves or perhaps Chief
Constable if you could introduce yourself and your colleague?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Thank
you, sir. My name is Richard Brunstrom. I am the Chief Constable
of North Wales Police. I would normally do this sort of thing
on my own, but I have been requested to bring a colleague with
me, so sitting on my right, your left, is Inspector Paul Firth
who is a District Commander for a geographical area: South Wrexham
in North Wales.
Q153 Chairman: Thank you both for coming.
I think you are aware of what we are looking into. It is a fairly
general inquiry but it is one that the Home Affairs Committee
would not really look into specifically, which is our particular
circumstance within Wales. Can you also for the purposes of generality
can you mention any of the special issues that you have in North
Wales related to policing in your specific area, both in terms
of the general picture and also perhaps Inspector Firth come in
on the specific divisional or sub-divisional sensitivities?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Yes,
certainly, sir. Would you like me to make a few opening remarks
to get started? Would that be helpful?
Q154 Chairman: By all means.
Chief Constable Brunstrom: If
I may I think I will be fairly brief. I have submitted quite lengthy
written evidence which I would seek not to repeat. In broad terms,
my general take on the situation is that for the first time in
my career—I have been in the police for 25 years now, a
quarter of a century—we are winning. I think in very general
terms we have an extremely sound Government strategy, which has
been pursued for many years. Rather than break it down into the
jargon of the national policing panel I would sum it up very much
more simply than that: we are being given the tools to do the
job and we are up for it, we are getting on with it. The general
synopsis at the moment is: more powers for the police, a much
more locally focused policing. I think it may have been Bill Clinton
who once said that all politics is local; the same is certainly
true of policing. We have to get down into small bite-size chunks
and we are. That is rightly accompanied, in my view, by significantly
more accountability in lots of different ways; that, packaged
together with significant willingness from our organisation to
restructure, to re-engineer, to rethink our culture, is being
very successful. We have the facts and figures to prove it, across
the country and in North Wales specifically.
Q155 Mr Edwards: Chief Constable Brunstrom,
you said there was an extremely sound Government strategy. Can
I commend the way that you put the key legislation in your submission
which outlines the powers that you have as a police force and
all the legislation that has been passed in the last 8 years,
which does look like a wide range of legislation. I am grateful
that you have set it out in the way that you have set it out.
Chief Constable Brunstrom: Thank
you, sir. There is a very large amount of new legislation. One
of my colleagues calculated the other day I think it was 262 new
offences created in the last seven or eight years which could
be interpreted as awful in a functioning parliamentary democracy,
but the way it has been put together and the way it is intended
to operate on the street with all sorts of controls and balances
of accountability does not make it a threat to our existence as
a democracy. It is giving us as a society the powers to deal with
anti-social behaviour which has been a real blight on our society
for my entire adult life. At last we are now being able to give
the vast majority of people who live law abiding lives their lives
back to recover their quality of life. It is a revelation for
me as a professional police officer that this whole package does
work. We are now so far into it that I am confident it does work.
It is not a flash in the pan. This is not one just year's blips
in the figures. We are on to something pretty powerful here.
Chairman: That is encouraging to know.
Q156 Albert Owen: Good morning, gentlemen.
Can I ask you: what are the main drivers in determining the priorities
of policing in North Wales? There are a number of things you have
submitted in your written submission with regard to the national
plan, the national intelligence model, community safety or local
consultation. What are the main drivers?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I cannot
answer that question simply, but I will be brief and I will ask
Paul Firth to come in in a moment. I think there are three main
drivers. One is Government strategy, which is clear. The second
is our intentions as professional leaders of the Police Service,
and most importantly, and I do mean most importantly, it is the
work that Paul Firth does with real local people living in real
communities. I think that has been missing in Police and Government
strategy until the very recent past. It has not been my normal
experience. We have done policing to society rather than done
it for society. I think having given Paul a chance to collect
his thoughts I would like perhaps Paul to develop.
Q157 Albert Owen: Just before you do,
Mr Brunstrom, can you outline the differences you have in different
CBUs within North Wales. Looking at the geography of North Wales
you have large urban towns which Inspector Firth is responsible
for, on the West side, but also in between you have a lot of different
areas, including large rural areas. What are the priorities there?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: North
Wales is a very diverse area. We have three basic commanded divisions.
They are simply east, west and central, but those are, themselves,
far too big to be coherent, neighbourhood type units, and that
is a mistake the police have made I think for decades. Policing
needs to be very local. It needs to reflect individual constituents,
customers, views of their locality, of their neighbourhood, and
a constitutional boundary like a police division or a county council
means almost nothing to real people. One of the recognitions in
this is we need to get much smaller than that. We cannot do this
through administrative units. We have to go and see real people
in their lives, as it were, in their normal circumstances—I
did not phrase that very eloquently, almost literally in their
homes, in very local circumstances to get any coherence to policing.
Paul Firth actually deals with an area south of Wrexham which
is a mixture of small towns and rural areas. I think it is quite
reflective of the whole of North Wales. It is neither the very
rural north-west nor is it the urban centre of Wrexham. It is
probably a fairly accurate reflection of the normality or the
generality of policing in North Wales. I would be keen for the
Committee to hear what Paul actually does to capture what real
people want. I do stress, Chairman, that this is really utterly
new in policing. It has only grown in the last handful of years.
Inspector Firth: Good morning,
everyone. My area is actually designated as Wrexham South, it
is an Inspector District. As has been said, I cover a mixture
of urban areas, which is the small villages which have moved into
one urban area that is the south of Wrexham and I then go down
some very rural tracks towards Dyfed-Powys, bordering on to the
Cheshire border, so I have a good mix of areas. The Chief Constable
mentioned earlier about bite size chunks. Even within my district
it is too big to look at as just one particular area. I have been
in charge of the area for about 18 months. My focus was on communication
and getting to know the people in my area, focusing my officers
on getting to know, even at a very basic level, the people that
they work with. I have undertaken to meet with elected members
at County Council level on a regular basis to try and determine
what they needed from me as a local district inspector, to be
open and frank with them as to what I am trying to deliver; that
has grown now into a monthly meeting. We have a very good rapport
locally which has helped me to determine where I want to put my
staff and what we want to focus on. We have increased the number
of dedicated Community Beat Managers by 50%: we have gone from
five to 10. Each of my areas now has a designated Community Beat
Manager and they have been set targets to make sure that they
meet and regularly attend their local community or town councils.
We are trying to introduce this relationship between local communities
and ourselves so that we can reflect local solutions for local
problems, I think as someone once said. We are focusing in on
those areas and in particular at the county council level it was
a general agreement that anti-social behaviour, particularly those
that the anti-social behaviour involves young people, would be
our priority. We have done quite a lot of work together to pull
on that and to impact on that problem. We have also looked at
lots of other things. We have targets to look at burglary dwellings
to try and reduce the impact that has on members of the community;
violent crime, vehicle crime and others but anti-social behaviour
has been our particular focus. We have done that side by side
with county councillors and at local level community councillors.
We have plans, which I am quite happy to go into if that is what
you would like me to do as to where we go next.
Q158 Albert Owen: Just before you do
perhaps both of you could respond to this. The BCUs are coterminous
with the local authorities and you say nobody really cares about
the boundaries and I understand that. What I am really after is:
is there conflict between the local policing—and I do agree
and support your philosophy for local policing and local solutions
at local level—is there a conflict between policing at that
local level and the national level of policing?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: I do
not think there is conflict. There is, of course, tension. One
thing the police has to do is deal with the current terrorist
threat and that is part of my job so I have to deal with the international
border at the port of Holyhead. That has no interest or relevance
really to local people even living on Anglesea as an issue. It
is just something that has to happen in the background. I do not
think there is a conflict there but there is a tension because
we have to spread ourselves through the whole range of our job.
In the past, as I have said, perhaps this is not quite the right
phrase, but the bottom end of it, the local community policing
need, has not been recognised nor met. Now it is. It is part of
a continuum. It is not a conflict but it means we have to readdress
our priorities, we have to rethink how we behave, what we do,
where do we put our resources, how do we meet that newly expressed
and newly recognised need, but no conflict. I think the planning
structure from Government level right down to Paul's level with
community councils is a coherent and intellectually viable whole
as a continuum.
Inspector Firth: I would agree
with that.
Q159 Mrs Williams: Could I ask: are there
tensions would you say between yourselves and, say, the British
Transport Police because we have the very important railway route
along North Wales. Can there be tensions there?
Chief Constable Brunstrom: There
are no tensions at all. I am very pleased to say that the British
Transport Police are responding in exactly the same way as the
Home Office Forces to act on the police national government agenda.
This has resulted in a Chief Inspector from the British Transport
Police attending all our Dyna Ddigon meetings, which I have set
out in my evidence. We had one of those last week. He has never
missed a meeting yet. It has increased the number of British Transport
Police officers working in North Wales. They are now recruiting
special constables for the first time in North Wales. They have
2 starting very shortly. There is really complete integration
now with other national police bodies, which again perhaps was
not the case, certainly not to this level, even a matter of 3
or 4 years ago. I think there is a significant shift to all try
and work off the same agenda for the first time.
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