Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-175)
CHIEF INSPECTOR
JAN BERRY
AND CHIEF
SUPERINTENDENT DEREK
BARNETT
8 MARCH 2006
Q160 Chairman: If local authorities
decide to halt or reduce speed camera operations following the
change in funding arrangements do you think police forces will
respond by taking up that role?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
Presumably you are talking about the change in the funding for
cameras. Again, I think it is too early to say. There is a concern
from some of my colleagues. We welcome the change in funding because
that sends a message out that speed enforcement is not a profit-making
event and I think that is absolutely right. The concern we have
is that we do not want to be left with the rump of all the enforcement
without the support of the funding that comes with it.
Q161 Chairman: What lessons have
been learned from the camera partnerships? Any?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
Some very good lessons have been learned in terms of when partners
work together with a common cause they are very effective. That
is not new. That has gone on for many years. There is an issue
that some of the camera partnerships have perhaps taken a lot
of the energy away from some of the less technology-focused partnerships,
particularly engineering and particularly education as well, but
overall I think the partnerships have worked well. Think the scheme
has worked well. There is just a concern about whether the new
funding arrangements will hit the service.
Q162 Chairman: Do you think the multi-agency
co-operation will continue or do you think the funding will destroy
that?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
I think it will continue and it is demonstrated in our own force
area. We talked about motorcycles earlier on this afternoon. When
local authorities, the police and the emergency services put their
efforts together to tackle a problem a lot can be achieved.
Q163 Chairman: Should we police our
motorways with speed cameras?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
We do already, certainly at road works.
Q164 Chairman: It is not quite the
same thing as having them on the M6 at rush hour, is it?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
No, it is not.
Q165 Chairman: I mean, if it is the
Thelwall viaduct you do not have a problem because nobody moves.
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
Yes. I think there is a case that the time/distance cameras would
be effective on motorways. The issue would be, I guess, making
sure the public were aware of that in a way that they are probably
not now.
Q166 Chairman: Do you think we are
getting too reliant on cameras?
Chief Inspector Berry: That is
what I was saying earlier on, that you have to have a mix between
technology and human beings. I am not saying that we have got
too many cameras. I think they are about right, provided they
are used intelligently, but we need to have that human resource
that works alongside those cameras. Can I go back to a point that
was made about the camera partnerships? It is very often determined
by the personalities within those partnerships making them work.
There are some brilliant partnerships where the funding will not
really make an awful lot of difference. It will help, it will
encourage and it will help them to be very creative but there
are other ones where it will not work because the personalities
do not work. We need to have a mechanism of being able to identify
where those partnerships are not working to make them more effective.
Q167 Chairman: Does that not bring
us back to your point about training? I am really a bit appalled
because I had not taken on board the fact that there was a very
structured training system. One of the arguments we have had about
the PCSOs and about traffic management officers is precisely that
there is an enormous difference between a trained police officer,
who is now not the cheapest of commodities in our national exchequer,
and those who are very focused on a much lower level, who are
much more restricted. Do both your Associations put very strongly
to government the need for a continuing process of training throughout
a police career because, you will forgive my saying so, Chief
Inspector, the Federation is frequently accused of being anti-new
technology, anti-changes in working practices, and surely one
of the lessons to be learned from what you have been saying is
that this is partly because of the structure of the existing training
system?
Chief Inspector Berry: Absolutely.
As I said, when you join you receive reasonable training. That
training is then developed with experience. It is that refresher
training that is so important and that is missing from us at the
moment.
Q168 Chairman: Would that be helped
if you had in a sense a focus on a roads policing unit?
Chief Inspector Berry: Roads policing
units will benefit from being trained to undertake the role that
they are undertaking. Earlier today I was involved in discussions
which hopefully will improve the professional development of all
officers, both through qualifications and the accreditation framework
within the Police Service, but people have to see training and
development as an investment, not as an abstraction, and that
is one of the difficulties in policing at the moment.
Q169 Chairman: What happens if somebody
realises that the officers doing the job have not got sufficient
skills to undertake a full range of traffic duties?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
It is not the case that there is not training or that it is not
of a high standard.
Q170 Chairman: No, I was not suggesting
that.
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
The problem is that it is patchy and it depends upon each force,
each chief constable, as to what extent specialist officers will
exist in the first place and the level of training they get. At
some levels in terms of investigation, in terms of the Road Death
Investigation Manual, there are some very highly trained officers.
I would hate to believe that that was not the case but it is patchy
and the fear I have is that if you have an officer going to the
scene of a serious collision and that officer is not sufficiently
trained and aware of how to protect himself or herself and the
public and how to gather evidence then we are falling down in
our duty.
Q171 Chairman: Supposing we had got
a case like that. What action would a senior officer take?
Chief Inspector Berry: This is
where the Police Service needs to be a learning organisation because
we do not always get it right but we have to look at incidents
and make sure that we can learn from them, so if there are safety
issues that come out of how a person has dealt with the scene
of an incident then we need to make sure that this does not become
a sanction and hit them round the head but that we try and learn
and develop to make sure we do not do it again. Police officers
have learned in their lives from not dealing appropriately with
the scene of an incident and we need to make sure that we learn
from that particular process. Motorways and other roads are hugely
dangerous places and we need to make sure people are skilled to
operate in that environment.
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
I think senior officers are aware of that. Recently in my own
force in Cheshire I was made aware that there were some officers
who had moved from criminal investigation work into roads policing
work and they had not been trained, and we were able very quickly
to identify that and almost immediately, overnight, put in some
mechanisms to put that right.
Q172 Chairman: But, Chief Superintendent,
with 43 different forces all behaving like individual prima donnas,
with each chief constable having his own patch and doing his own
little thing—and they are mostly "he's"—
Chief Inspector Berry: There are
national standards and what the Police Federation and I know the
Police Superintendents' Association have said for some time now
is that those national standards have to be met. It should not
be down to luck as to which force you happen to be in with regard
to what quality of training you get.
Q173 Chairman: Are you really telling
me that even the inspectorate would not automatically pick up
on the speed at which that level of training has been instituted
and that kind of problem has been solved?
Chief Inspector Berry: I think
it has been given far more consideration today than maybe it was
two or three years ago.
Q174 Chairman: I just want to ask
you one more question before you escape. Have you faced any problems
getting local authorities to make CCTV footage available for crash
investigation?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
I am not aware of any occasions when that has happened.
Chief Inspector Berry: I am not
aware of any.
Q175 Chairman: Supposing local authorities
and anyone else holding recorded evidence of collisions needed
to make it available to the police, are you of the opinion that
that is going to be quite possible?
Chief Superintendent Barnett:
Yes.
Chief Inspector Berry: I am certainly
of that opinion.
Chairman: Can I say that, whatever our
questions, we are very aware of the good job that you do and we
are very grateful to you both for coming. Thank you very much.
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