House of Commons - Welsh Affairs

Select Committee on Welsh Affairs Fourth Report

3 The National Policing Plan

41. The Police Reform Act 2002 set a requirement upon the Government to lay before Parliament by the end of November each year, a National Policing Plan (NPP) for the following three years.[67] The NPP would set the strategic direction for policing in England and Wales and establish a performance framework, including any indicators and targets against which a police force's performance would be measured and compared to similar forces (the Similar Forces Groups).[68] The Plan builds on the system of comparative assessment that groups forces across England and Wales with similar sizes and demographic characteristics so that a meaningful comparison could be made across police forces.

42. The first National Policing Plan for 2003-06[69] was issued in November 2002.[70] It established a single source for the Government's priorities for policing; policies for the delivery of those priorities; and the performance indicators for measuring progress against those priorities. Furthermore, the 2002 Plan placed the work of the police in the context of the delivery of the Government's Public Service Agreements (PSAs). The assessment of that performance would be carried out under the Policing Performance Assessment Framework (PPAF).[71]

43. The second National Policing Plan for 2004-07,[72] was published in November 2003. It represented an incremental change in Home Office expectations for police planning. The Plan set a national framework of minimum standards against which policing should be delivered locally.[73] It identified strategic priorities alongside a framework for local police planning, in order to "deliver policing to national standards within a dynamic and increasingly engaged local environment".[74] The 2003 Plan also identified the key priorities of: tackling anti-social behaviour, reducing volume crime, combating serious and organized crime and providing a citizen focused service based on the reassurance agenda.[75]

44. The current National Policing Plan for 2005-2008,[76] stated that the "reduction of crime and the provision of a citizen-focused police service should be addressed by all forces and authorities in keeping with the reform proposals set out in Building Communities, Beating Crime: A better police service for the 21st century".[77] The 2004 Plan placed a greater focus on community policing and civic engagement, and allowed for individual forces and authorities to determine the weight to be given to the national priorities on the basis of local needs. Furthermore, it also provided scope for individual police forces and authorities to add any other priorities which reflected substantial public concern in their area.[78] The Home Office argued that the 2004 Plan sought to "provide genuine flexibility for the identification of local policing priorities within a national framework".[79]

45. The increased importance of local priorities in the 2004 Plan has significantly changed the relevance of the National Policing Plan to Wales. While local priorities have relevance in both Wales and England, there is now a key difference.[80] The local arrangements for the delivery of strategic priorities have to reflect the local (or Welsh) context. With devolution, that offered a greater opportunity for Welsh Assembly Government involvement in the delivery of the 2004 Plan. As discussed earlier, while, police forces and authorities remain the responsibility of the UK Government, the policy agenda in local government, health, and the fire and rescue services (which are all key in ensuring the successful delivery of police services in Wales) fall within the remit of the Welsh Assembly Government.[81]

National and Local Priorities

46. Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales police, gave evidence to us prior to the publication of the National Policing Plan 2005-2008.[82] He told us that while he was happy with the content of the Government's strategic agenda contained within the 2003 Plan, he aired a note of caution over the emphasis that had been placed on national priorities. He stressed while there was no conflict between the two, the local agenda was as "equally important" as the national agenda.[83]

47. The 2004 Plan has tried to bridge that divide by providing scope for the creation and measurement of local priorities and targets within the National Policing Plan. The Home Office confirmed that the new National Policing Plan had consciously sought to "strike a balance between local and national priorities, by setting a clear framework of national minimum standards and performance assessment, while leaving sufficient flexibility for locally identified priorities to be addressed".[84] Stephen Rimmer, Director of Policing Policy at the Home Office, argued that the 2004 Plan had been refined to move away from "what many observers felt in its first year was a rather top-heavy and over-prescriptive set of requirements on the police service, into one which makes much more explicit the relationship between national standards and local flexibility and local priorities".[85] He acknowledged that questions would remain over the ability of forces to deliver local priorities over and above the national priorities,[86] but averred that "much more explicit scope" was given for local priorities in the 2004 Plan.[87]

48. That shift in direction was acknowledged by our police witnesses. Chief Constable Mike Tonge of Gwent police told us that the new Plan "does shift the context somewhat in favour of what the local public will want".[88] Malcolm King, the Chairman of North Wales police authority, representing the Police Authorities of Wales, also highlighted that change in tone, and believed that the 2004 Plan had achieved a better balance between national and local targets.[89]

49. Chief Constable Barbara Wilding of South Wales police welcomed that change. She told us that "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".[90]

50. Mike Tonge, Chief Constable of Gwent police believed that the change of emphasis in the current National Policing Plan could result in a more equal distribution of resources to address local and national priorities. He argued that "what gets measured in any organisation tends to get done and performance issues tend to drive activity".[91] With that in mind, Chief Constable Barbara Wilding of South Wales police, hoped that the new National Policing Plan would also expand performance measurements to include customer focus, customer satisfaction and the quality of service, all of which were centred on more locally based concerns and priorities. She believed that such an approach would also necessitate a more even distribution of resources to enable local as well as national targets to be met.[92]

51. The National Policing Plans have provided police forces in England and Wales with a clear and focused set of priorities and performance targets for the next three years. However the priorities set out in the first two Plans concentrated on national policies for crime reduction. That gave little opportunity for police forces to address local needs and concerns. The current Plan goes some way to redress that imbalance. We welcome the shift in direction in the National Policing Plan for 2005-08 which offers Welsh police forces a greater opportunity to address local priorities for tackling crime in Wales. We look to the Government to ensure that sufficient funds are provided for the police to address both national and local priorities.

Flexibility in Targets

52. Chief Constable Barbara Wilding told us that there had been two further improvements to the 2003 Plan. She believed that previous Plans had been quite narrow in their targets and had been focused mainly 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 [than towards] local concerns".[93]

53. During the course of our inquiry a commonly cited example of this was the target to reduce domestic burglary. Chief Superintendent Brian Greaves, co-chair of Rhondda Cynon Taff Community Safety Partnership, told us that the number of burglaries in Rhondda Cynon Taff were so small, that " if we are being targeted by central government to reduce burglaries still further it could be a disproportionate focus of our resources on to something which would be almost impossible to reduce still further".[94]

54. That concern appears to have been reflected in the 2004 Plan, and in the subsequent revision of the Public Service Agreements. Hazel Blears MP, Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing, Community Safety, Counter Terrorism and Resilience, told us that:

"In the past the kind of targets we set were around specific crime types - you must reduce burglary by so much, you must reduce vehicle crime…If you are in an area, where robbery, for example, is not a big problem…having a specific target for robbery does not really meet your needs. What I have done now in developing the latest set of PSA targets is to say that there will be a target of reducing crime overall by 15%. Within that 15% it is a matter for local negotiation what the make-up is of that 15%".[95]

55. The second improvement identified by our witnesses was that the 2004 Plan measured a broader range of issues, rather than simply focusing on crime reduction, and thus, more accurately reflected the multi-faceted nature of police work. Chief Constable Barbara Wilding welcomed this: "we are being measured in a number of other domains [which] more reflects a greater range of police work".[96]

56. We welcome the change in target-setting from a percentage reduction in individual crimes to a broader percentage reduction in total crime levels. We believe that this will assist Welsh police forces to better combat problem crime in their force areas and to better reflect their performance against those targets.

The National Intelligence Model

57. A further tool for identifying targets and priorities in the local context is the National Intelligence Model (NIM). The NIM was launched by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) and was adopted by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2000.[97] The National Intelligence Model has enabled policy makers and police to understand the nature of crime at force level, regional level and national level. Forces are then able to draw upon that intelligence to set local priorities.

58. The Model also provides a framework for managing intelligence and the activity which flows from it, be it strategy, tasking and co-ordination, working with partners, managing risk or controlling budgets.[98] North Wales police explained that the Model allows for "information to be collected, researched and analysed in a structured way. It offers the opportunity to have an understanding of the 'big picture' of local problems [which] means that we can create strategies that will reduce crime and improve the quality of life in our communities".[99] Furthermore, it added that the National Intelligence Model is linked clearly to the priorities identified in the National Policing Plan 2005-08, therefore it provided North Wales police with "an excellent opportunity to use this tool as an effective way of tackling [our] priorities".[100]

59. We welcome the introduction of the National Intelligence Model and are pleased to hear of the positive effect that it has had in Wales. We look to the Government to ensure that best practice under the National Intelligence Model is implemented across police forces in Wales.

67 See Part 1 of the Police Reform Act 2002, available at www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2002/20030--b.htm#1 Back

68 Ev 319 Back

69 Referred to in this Report as the 2002 Plan. Back

70 20 November 2002. See www.policereform.gov.uk/natpoliceplan/index.html Back

71 Ev 308 Back

72 Referred to in this Report as the 2003 Plan. Back

73 Ev 309 Back

74 National Policing Plan 2004-07, Foreword. Back

75 The key priorities of the NPP 2004-2007 very much shaped the scope and focus of this inquiry. Back

76 Referred to in this Report as the 2004 Plan. Back

77 National Policing Plan 2005-2008 : Safer, Stronger Communities, available at: www.policereform.gov.uk/docs/national_policing_plan.pdf Back

78 National Policing Plan 2005-2008 : Safer, Stronger Communities, available at: www.policereform.gov.uk/docs/national_policing_plan.pdf Back